AI Agents for Economic Research: From Tools to Autonomous Researchers

Anton Korinek's NBER working paper argues that AI is evolving from responsive tools to autonomous agents that can plan, run multi-step analyses, and collaborate across tools to advance economic research. We trace the arc from System 1 to System 2 reasoning to agentic AI, explore vibe coding, private-data protocols, and cost/governance issues, and discuss why human judgment remains essential even as AI reshapes the questions we can tackle.

Source: https://www.nber.org/papers/w34202

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