Central Questions EP 2: Are Giant Companies Rewriting Capitalism? Yueran Ma on Adam Smith, AI, and the Future of Firms

Two hundred and fifty years after Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, the economy looks very different from the world he described.

Firms are bigger. Production is more centralized. AI and automation are changing what companies can do at scale. And yet markets still matter, perhaps more than ever, in deciding which firms rise, which fall, and how innovation spreads.

In this episode of Central Questions, Stefan Ingves speaks with Yueran Ma, Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, about the rise of large corporations, the changing role of capital and labor, and what Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Hayek can still teach us about today’s economy.

They discuss why the largest firms now account for a growing share of output and assets, why employment has not concentrated in the same way, what AI could mean for productivity and inequality, and why financial markets may be crucial for spreading the gains from capital more broadly.

Guest: Yueran Ma, Professor of Finance, University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Host: Stefan Ingves, former Governor of the Riksbank and Senior Fellow at Swedish House of Finance

Topics: Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Yueran Ma, Stefan Ingves, Central Questions, Swedish House of Finance, large firms, corporations, AI, automation, capital deepening, productivity, corporate finance, economic growth, financial markets, capitalism, Karl Marx, Hayek, visible hand, invisible hand, firm concentration, monetary policy, innovation, Chicago Booth