Simon Johnson

Simon H. Johnson (born January 16, 1963) is a British-American economist who has served as the Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at the MIT Sloan School of Management since 2004. He also served as a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics from 2008 to 2019. Before moving to MIT, he taught at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business from 1991 to 1997. From March 2007 through the end of August 2008, he served as Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund.

In 2024, Johnson, Daron Acemoglu, and James A. Robinson were awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for their comparative studies in prosperity between nations.

Education Born in 1963 in Sheffield, Johnson was privately educated at Abbotsholme School in Rocester and then went onto read Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) at the University of Oxford where he was an undergraduate student at Corpus Christi College, Oxford and graduated in 1984. He then received an MA in economics (with distinction) from the University of Manchester in 1986. He went on to doctoral study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was advised by Rudiger Dornbusch and received a PhD in economics in 1989, writing a dissertation entitled Inflation, intermediation, and economic activity.

Career and research From 1989 to 1991, Johnson was a junior scholar at Harvard University, where he was a member of the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies and a fellow of its Russian Research Center.

In June 2026 the UK government announced the formation of the AI Economics Institute, with Johnson as chair.

Affiliations Johnson is a member of the International Advisory Council at the Center for Social and Economic Research (CASE). He is also a member of the Congressional Budget Office's Panel of Economic Advisers. He wrote the 2010 book 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown , along with James Kwak, with whom he has also co-founded and regularly contributes to the economics blog The Baseline Scenario. He is also author of White House Burning: Our National Debt and Why It Matters to You (2013); Jump-Starting America: How Breakthrough Science Can Revive Economic Growth and the American Dream (2019), with Jonathan Gruber; and Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity (2023), with Daron Acemoglu.

Power and Progress

Published in 2023, Power and Progress is a book on the historical development of technology and the social and political consequences of technology. The book addresses three questions, on the relationship between new machines and production techniques and wages, on the way in which technology could be harnessed for social goods, and on the reason for the enthusiasm around artificial intelligence (AI).

Power and Progress argues that technologies do not automatically yield social goods, their benefits going to a narrow elite. It offers a rather critical view of artificial intelligence, stressing its largely negative impact on jobs and wages and on democracy.

Acemoglu and Johnson also provide a vision about how new technologies could be harnessed for social good. They see the Progressive Era as offering a model. And they discuss a list of policy proposals for the redirection of technology that includes market incentives, the break up of big tech, tax reform, investing in workers, privacy protection and data ownership, and a digital advertising tax.

Award He received in 2025 a Carnegie Corporation of New York Great Immigrant Award

Personal life Johnson is married with two daughters.