Progress is humanity's defining achievement: the cumulative process of each generation building on the knowledge of the last. It came slowly at first - millennia from foraging to settled agriculture, centuries from agriculture to industry - then astonishingly fast. But progress has not been shared equally. Every great leap forward created winners and losers. In this course, we explore what drives progress, what determines who gets to benefit from it, and what we can do to promote broadly shared progress. We trace the tension between progress and inequality from forager societies to Artificial Intelligence, using tools from economic history, applied microeconomics, and data analysis. Students read frontier research and popular writing. They will work with historical and contemporary datasets. The centerpiece is a storytelling project: using AI tools, you will build an interactive visual essay that brings one aspect of progress to life for a broad audience. You pick the topic. Make it worth reading. Coding skills, experience with empirical analysis, and a willingness to engage with AI tools like Cursor are required. Enrollment is by application only (See https://economics.stanford.edu/undergraduate/forms).
3 units · Letter (ABCD/NP)
Progress is humanity's defining achievement: the cumulative process of each generation building on the knowledge of the last. It came slowly at first - millennia from foraging to settled agriculture, centuries from agriculture to industry - then astonishingly fast. But progress has not been shared equally. Every great leap forward created winners and losers. In this course, we explore what drives progress, what determines who gets to benefit from it, and what we can do to promote broadly shared progress. We trace the tension between progress and inequality from forager societies to Artificial Intelligence, using tools from economic history, applied microeconomics, and data analysis. Students read frontier research and popular writing. They will work with historical and contemporary datasets. The centerpiece is a storytelling project: using AI tools, you will build an interactive visual essay that brings one aspect of progress to life for a broad audience. You pick the topic. Make it worth reading. Coding skills, experience with empirical analysis, and a willingness to engage with AI tools like Cursor are required. Enrollment is by application only (See https://economics.stanford.edu/undergraduate/forms).
Offered in Spring 2027 at Stanford University.