PERSON
Simon Johnson
MIT economist and 2024 Nobel laureate in economics, former IMF chief economist, who applied Kindleberger's framework directly to the AI cycle in his December 2025 analysis of the speculative boom.
Simon Johnson, Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT Sloan and co-recipient of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics (with Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson), has spent his career working on the intersection of institutions, economic development, and financial crisis. As chief economist of the International Monetary Fund during 2007-2008, he observed the global financial crisis from inside the institution responsible for managing it. His subsequent work — including 13 Bankers (with James Kwak) and Power and Progress (with Acemoglu) — has extended Kindleberger's concerns about institutional capture and distributional outcomes into contemporary debates about technology, finance, and democracy.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Johnson's December 2025 Project Syndicate essay applied Kindleberger's framework directly to the AI moment with the authority of someone who combines academic credentials with institutional experience. His three questions — Will the investment build something useful? For whom? And what will the downside look like? — provide the analytical structure that this book's chapters organize. The