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NBER Working Papers · September 29, 2026 · On the brief until October 13, 2026

The Macroeconomic Effect of AI: Sizing the Software Engineering Channel -- by Alex Blumenfeld, Jonathon Hazell, Chen Lian, Andreas Schaab

EconomicsFinance
THE AI ANGLE
Increasing software engineering productivity

Researchers modeled the macroeconomic impact of AI by linking firm stock returns to software engineering payroll shares. They found that AI raised expected software engineering productivity by 32.6 percent between 2022 and 2025, implying a 3.6 to 6.5 percent GDP increase. These gains more than doubled by mid-2026 as coding agents advanced.

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THE TEACHING ANGLE
Classes can examine how researchers use cross-sectional stock price sensitivities to estimate aggregate productivity and GDP changes.

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