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Alex Imas on the three (or four) kinds of AI economists
Finally there is micro theory. This is where decision theory, game theory, mech design, org econ (sort of) live. This field works by setting out a set of assumptions and then deriving the expected results; alternatively one could start with a result and work backwards to derive the necessary and sufficient assumptions. There is a ton of potential here to do work on transformative AI: start with assumptions on how AI differs than human agents (eg relax basic assumptions on constraints, on scarcity, introduce completely different objective functions), then derive implications. But this is where there is the least amount of work, and it’s important for that to change (and I believe that it already is).
Most of my graduate school work was situated in a bit of a liminal space that was equally comfortable (or uncomfortable) in sociology, economics, and political science. We cared a lot about principal-agent problems, microfoundations of behavior, bounded rationality, and what all of these things meant for institutions.
Obviously, I’m biased, but I think this area is extremely rich and mostly untapped for thinking carefully about how a world full of AI agents might unfold.