Leading economist Chad Syverson speculates about the ingredients in productivity’s secret sauce.

In this episode of the McKinsey Global Institute’s Forward thinking podcast, co-host Janet Bush talks with Chad Syverson. Syverson is George C. Tiao Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. His work focuses on the interactions between firm structure, market structure, and productivity.

In this podcast, he covers topics including the following:

• Why productivity is important
• How the world economy is doing on productivity
• What major themes of our age, from the path to net zero to trade fragmentation and aging, could impact productivity
• The potential role of AI to change the game for productivity
• How productivity growth is diffused

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A former US deputy chief technology officer talks about how digitization can be used to create a government that works for the people.

Jennifer Pahlka is the founder of Code for America, served as the United States government’s deputy chief technology officer, and is author of the book Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better. Jenn joins us to share her personal reflections of her time in government and the path forward.

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Co-host Janet Bush talks with Ed Glaeser, the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics and the chairman of the Department of Economics at Harvard University. His latest book, coauthored with health economist David Cutler, is Survival of the city: The future of urban life in an age of isolation, written to make sense of what might be the impact of the pandemic on cities. They covers topics including:

• Has the pandemic changed cities temporarily or permanently?
• What does the hybrid building look like?
• Do developing world cities teach us something new?
• How can homelessness be tackled?

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Co-host Janet Bush talks with Marco Buti. Buti holds the Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa Chair in European Economic and Monetary Integration at the European University Institute. They cover topics including the following:

• The evolution of European policy coordination
• European competitiveness
• Whether Europe’s business model is sustainable
• The need of more speed among European companies in frontier technologies
• The importance of Europe’s capital markets union

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Co-host Michael Chui talks with Nan Ransohoff. Ransohoff is the head of climate at Stripe and leads Frontier, an advanced market commitment for carbon removal. She answers questions including:

• Is carbon removal a get out of jail free card for emitters?
• What are the most promising carbon removal technologies?
• Is it possible to scale up effective technologies quick enough?
• How much do costs need to come down before scaling is possible?
• What is an advanced market commitment?

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Co-host Michael Chui talks with Andy McAfee. McAfee is a principal research scientist at the MIT Sloan School of Management, co-founder and co-director of MIT’s initiative on the digital economy, and the inaugural visiting fellow at the Technology in Society organization at Google. 

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Co-host Janet Bush talks with Stephen King. King is a senior economic advisor to HSBC, having served as the bank’s group chief economist from 1998 to 2015. His latest book, very prescient in timing, is We Need to Talk About Inflation: 14 Urgent Lessons from the Last 2,000 Years. In this podcast, he covers topics including the following:

• The root causes of the current resurgence of inflation
• How long higher inflation may persist
• What history tells us about the management of inflation
• The main economic problem that lies ahead
• Why inflation matters

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Co-host Janet Bush talks with Homi Kharas. Kharas is a senior fellow in the Center for Sustainable Development at the Brookings Institution and also cofounder of World Data Lab. He studies policies and trends influencing developing countries, the emergence of the world's middle class, and global governance. He's collaborated with the McKinsey Global Institute on research into consumers in emerging markets and economic empowerment, and his latest book is The Rise of the Global Middle Class: How the Search for the Good Life Can Change The World.

In this podcast, he covers topics including the following:

• How the character of the world’s middle classes is changing
• How the middle classes shape our world
• What becoming middle class means for a household
• The role of the middle class in climate change
• How AI may affect the middle class

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