Stanford Digital Economy Lab
Confidence 0.80 · 2 sources · last confirmed 2026-08-12
The Stanford Digital Economy Lab is a research initiative at Stanford University focused on the economics of digital technology and AI — productivity, labor markets, market structure, measurement of intangible capital. Directed by Erik Brynjolfsson.
Distinct from Stanford HAI and the AI Index, though personnel overlap: Brynjolfsson is on the AI Index Steering Committee and the Digital Economy Lab director.
Role in the wiki
Bumped to source_count: 2 on 12 August 2026 via [[2026-08-01-brynjolfsson-mckinsey-talks-talent-biggest-ai-opportunity|Brynjolfsson’s McKinsey Talks Talent appearance]], where he speaks as the lab’s director and gives the current state of its ADP payroll partnership — the entry-level employment decline in the most AI-exposed occupations now at 16–17%, collected monthly and still growing. The underlying papers remain un-ingested; the lab’s output reaches the wiki so far only through interviews.
Publisher of Brynjolfsson, Chandar & Chen (2025) “Canaries in the Coal Mine?” — the wiki’s primary empirical source on AI’s recent employment effects.
Likely future-recurring as a source of empirical AI-economics research. Brynjolfsson’s earlier customer-support productivity study (Brynjolfsson, Li & Rock 2023, NBER 31161 → QJE 2025) also originated from this research stream; not yet ingested as its own source page (currently summarized via Erik Brynjolfsson entity page).
Open questions
- Lab’s funding model and full personnel roster.
- Other published Digital Economy Lab papers worth ingesting standalone (vs. cited via Brynjolfsson entity page).
- Relationship to Stanford’s broader economics department (HAI vs. Digital Economy Lab vs. econ dept — overlapping AI-economics communities).