Insider Brief
- Microsoft’s AI Economy Institute launched its third cohort of researchers to study how artificial intelligence is being adopted across firms, industries and communities.
- Microsoft said the cohort will focus on frontier firms and how they are reshaping work, job design, skill demands, productivity and regional economic development.
- The research will examine the gap between what AI systems can do and what organizations can deploy, along with whether AI spreads broadly across economies or concentrates among fewer firms and regions.
Microsoft’s AI Economy Institute will study how artificial intelligence is being adopted across firms, industries and communities.
According to Microsoft, the new cohort will focus on what it calls frontier firms and how they are reshaping work, job design, skill demands, productivity and regional economic development. Microsoft said the group includes outside researchers and experts from institutions around the world.
Microsoft noted that AI is being adopted quickly, but the research base for understanding its economic effects remains limited. The AI Economy Institute was created to build more evidence around AI’s effect on work, jobs, education, productivity and opportunity.
The third cohort follows two earlier groups that studied how AI is affecting the talent pipeline, including higher education, skills, K-12, community colleges and early-career pathways. The new cohort moves further into the economy by examining how leading organizations are adopting AI, redesigning work and creating conditions for productivity and broader use. Microsoft said the institute has received more than 800 responses to its research proposal calls since launch.
The research will examine the gap between what AI systems can do and what organizations can deploy. Microsoft said that gap will help shape the pace of adoption, while productivity gains may depend on how firms change workflows, teams and decision-making.
The cohort will also study whether automation enhances human learning or displaces it, and whether AI spreads broadly across economies or becomes concentrated among a smaller set of firms and regions.
Microsoft said the goal is to produce empirical evidence that can help policymakers, companies and institutions make decisions as the AI economy develops.
2026 Cohort
Brian Jabarian, Carnegie Mellon University
Caspar David Peter, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, Netherlands
Christoph Siemroth, University of Essex, England
Daniel Yue, Georgia Institute of Technology
Edoardo Maria Acabbi, University of Mannheim, Germany
Frank Nagle, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, advising fellow and Cohort 2
Friederike Mengel, University of Essex, England, and Erasmus University Rotterdam, Germany
Gianmarco Ottaviano, Bocconi University, Italy
Ilan Strauss, AI Disclosures Project
Johannes Wachs, Corvinus University, Budapest, Hungary
Luca Henkel, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, Netherlands
Luca Mazzone, University of Montreal, Canada
Laura Nurski, Centre for European Policy Studies, Belgium, Cohort 2
Meeyoung “Mia” Cha, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, South Korea
Mustafa Afacan, Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, United Arab Emirates, and Sabancı University, Turkey, World Bank affiliated senior fellow
Nataliya Wright, Columbia University
Nuriye Melisa Bilgin, Koç University, Turkey
Pëllumb Reshidi, Florida State University
Pierre-Alexandre Balland, Centre for European Policy Studies, Belgium, advising fellow and Cohort 2
Salman Khan, Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, United Arab Emirates, World Bank affiliated senior fellow
Serena Booth, Brown University
Wesley Rosslyn-Smith, University of Pretoria, South Africa, advising fellow
Yingfei Wang, Foster School of Business, University of Washington
