The Economics of Work with Ben Zweig

Daniel Rock - What Automation Means for How We Organize Jobs

What happens to a job when AI touches it? The answer depends on something most frameworks aren't designed to measure. In this episode, Ben sits down with Daniel Rock, assistant professor at Penn and co-founder of Work Helix, to dig into AI exposure. Topics covered: * What "AI exposure" measures * Why tasks are "assemblages," not atoms, and what that means for how we think about job change * The task chaining paper: why the sequence in which tasks are automated matters as much as which tasks get automated * Why the handoff costs of breaking work into steps also have handoff benefits and when human checkpoints create value rather than friction * Jobs as equilibrium objects: why there may never be a complete theory of how tasks get bundled into jobs, and what we can learn from the attempt * What academics can learn from entrepreneurs and vice versa * Why the green shoots of AI's impact on science and medicine point toward something much bigger than productivity gains at work About Daniel Rock: Daniel Rock is an assistant professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and co-founder of Work Helix. His research sits at the intersection of economics, organizational behavior, and artificial intelligence, with a focus on how technology changes work and how firms can measure and manage that change. Follow Daniel on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-rock-61252485/?isSelfProfile=false] Papers discussed: Weak Bundle, Strong Bundle [https://cepr.org/publications/dp21453] Task Chaining [https://www.nber.org/papers/w34859] Follow us on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/company/revelio-labs/] Follow Ben on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-zweig/?isSelfProfile=false] Sign up for our Newsletter [https://us.list-manage.com/c2HAUUyLb_e?e=2bdcb71555&c2id=454b62dc897f000ca0825a27c8968771] Visit our website [https://www.reveliolabs.com/] for more information Get in touch with us at info@reveliolabs.com [info@reveliolabs.com]

Alexis Fink - The Science of Making Work Not Suck

Most conversations about the future of work focus on technology. This one focuses on people. In this episode, Ben sits down with Alexis Fink, organizational psychologist and president of SIOP — the Society for Industrial-Organizational Psychology — to explore what over a century of behavioral science actually tells us about how work gets done, why organizations succeed or fail, and what leaders get dangerously wrong about their own people. Alexis brings a perspective that's rarely heard in economics conversations: one grounded not in incentives and market forces, but in how humans actually behave under pressure, in teams, and inside complex organizational systems. Topics covered: * What industrial-organizational psychology is * Why meetings are almost always done wrong and what a genuinely good one looks like * Why AI adoption metrics are measuring the wrong metrics * The elevator analogy: why the real potential of AI isn't doing existing things faster, it's enabling things that were never possible before * "Brain fry" and cognitive vigilance, and how pushing people harder with AI tools may produce diminishing, even negative, returns * Why strategic workforce planning is one of the most underrated practices in business, and why so few companies actually do it well About Alexis Fink: Alexis Fink is an organizational psychologist, people analytics leader, and president of SIOP, the Society for Industrial-Organizational Psychology. She has led people analytics and workforce strategy functions at some of the world's largest tech companies and is one of the leading voices on the intersection of behavioral science, organizational design, and the future of work. Follow Alexis on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexisfink/] Follow us on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/company/revelio-labs/] Follow Ben on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-zweig/?isSelfProfile=false] Sign up for our Newsletter [https://us.list-manage.com/c2HAUUyLb_e?e=2bdcb71555&c2id=454b62dc897f000ca0825a27c8968771] Visit our website [https://www.reveliolabs.com/] for more information Get in touch with us at info@reveliolabs.com [info@reveliolabs.com]

Nick Bloom - The New Geography of Work

Five years after the pandemic reshaped where and how we work, where have we actually landed? In this episode, Ben sits down with Nick Bloom, professor of economics at Stanford and the world's leading researcher on remote and hybrid work. Drawing on surveys of hundreds of thousands of workers across many countries,Nick unpacks what the data actually shows about productivity, innovation, and the future of the office. Topics covered: * Where work-from-home rates have settled since the pandemic peak * Why culture, not technology, explains why some countries went back to the office while others didn't * The "personal trainer effect": why being in the same room still matters for concentration and collaboration * Why forcing people back five days a week drives up attrition by a third and costs firms more than they save * The U-shaped relationship between age and office preference, and what it means for how companies should design their policies * What good management actually looks like, and why so much bad management persists even when better practices are well understood * The "donut effect": how hybrid work is reshaping cities and suburbs About Nick Bloom: Nick Bloom is the William D. Eberle Professor of Economics at Stanford University and co-founder of WFH Research. He is one of the most cited economists in the world on the subjects of management practices, and the future of work, and is the author of the upcoming book The Triple Win. Follow Nick on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-bloom-stanford/] and on X [https://x.com/I_Am_NickBloom] Follow us on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/company/revelio-labs/] Follow Ben on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-zweig/?isSelfProfile=false] Sign up for our Newsletter [https://us.list-manage.com/c2HAUUyLb_e?e=2bdcb71555&c2id=454b62dc897f000ca0825a27c8968771] Visit our website [https://www.reveliolabs.com/] for more information Get in touch with us at info@reveliolabs.com [info@reveliolabs.com]

Al Roth - Moral Economics and Repugnant Transactions

What makes a transaction repugnant? And why does society allow some controversial markets to flourish while banning others that seem far less harmful? In this episode, Ben sits down with Al Roth [https://web.stanford.edu/~alroth/], Nobel laureate and professor of economics at Stanford, to explore the hidden moral architecture beneath the markets we take for granted, and the ones we don't allow at all. Drawing on his new book Moral Economics [https://www.amazon.com/Moral-Economics-Prostitution-Controversial-Transactions/dp/1541702018], Al makes the case that good policy can't be built on moral intuition alone. Topics covered: * What "repugnant" actually means in relation to transactions * Surrogacy, gene editing, and AI companions: where the line between protection and paternalism blurs * The coercion vs. exploitation distinction: is banning a market for poor people's benefit sometimes just denying them an opportunity? * How public opinion and legislation diverge * Why labor markets are fundamentally different from commodity markets * How the internet (and now AI) has flooded job markets with applications and destroyed the information value of applying * What the economics job market's "signaling" system can teach LinkedIn, dating apps, and corporate hiring alike Al Roth is a Professor of Economics at Stanford University and a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He is the author of Who Gets What — and Why and Moral Economics, and is one of the world's leading researchers in market design and matching theory. Follow us on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/company/revelio-labs/] Follow Ben on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-zweig/?isSelfProfile=false] Sign up for our Newsletter [https://us.list-manage.com/c2HAUUyLb_e?e=2bdcb71555&c2id=454b62dc897f000ca0825a27c8968771] Visit our website [https://www.reveliolabs.com/] for more information Get in touch with us at info@reveliolabs.com [info@reveliolabs.com]

David Autor - How Technology Affects Work

In this episode, Ben sits down with David Autor, professor of economics at MIT, to explore how technology transforms work at every level from individual tasks to entire industries. Topics covered: * Why transformative technologies require organizational reinvention, not just adoption * The "expertise framework": how the same automation can be a force multiplier for one worker and a threat to another, depending on where their specialized skills sit * Occupational licensing as a double-edged sword: consumer protection vs. a barrier to adaptation * Whether AI will complement high-skilled workers, substitute for low-skilled ones, or eventually do both, and what the evidence actually shows so far * The skills that will remain valuable * Why we are dangerously under-invested in helping workers transition David Autor [https://economics.mit.edu/people/faculty/david-h-autor] is Ford Professor of Economics at MIT and co-director of the MIT Work of the Future task force. He is among the most cited economists in the world on the topics of labor markets, inequality, and technological change. Follow us on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/company/revelio-labs/] Follow Ben on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-zweig/?isSelfProfile=false] Sign up for our Newsletter [https://us.list-manage.com/c2HAUUyLb_e?e=2bdcb71555&c2id=454b62dc897f000ca0825a27c8968771] Visit our website [https://www.reveliolabs.com/] for more information Get in touch with us at info@reveliolabs.com [info@reveliolabs.com]