For most of my career, I have worked at the intersection of economics, governance and institutional reform.
I have advised governments in Papua New Guinea, Nigeria and India. I have worked in international development agencies and supported the leadership of one of the world’s largest global health partnerships. Across these very different environments, I have found myself returning to the same question:
How do people and institutions make better decisions?
Economists traditionally answer this question through the lens of scarcity.
Resources are scarce. Time is scarce. Capital is scarce. Information is imperfect. Economics helps us understand how choices are made under these constraints.
It is a powerful framework. But I increasingly wonder whether we are entering a new era.
For most of human history, knowledge itself was scarce. Expertise was concentrated in a relatively small number of people and institutions. Analysis was expensive. Access to information was limited.
Today, artificial intelligence is changing that.
For the first time, individuals and organisations can access vast quantities of information, analysis and expertise at near-zero marginal cost. Tasks that once required teams of analysts can now be completed in minutes. Documents can be searched, synthesised and interrogated in ways that were previously impossible.
This raises an important question.
What happens when information is no longer the scarce resource?
The answer, I believe, is that attention, judgment and decision-making become more important than ever.
Many organisations do not suffer from a shortage of information. They suffer from an inability to convert information into insight, insight into decisions, and decisions into action.
Board members receive hundreds of pages of papers but struggle to identify the critical issues.
Governments commission studies and reviews but fail to implement recommendations.
Large organisations accumulate vast archives of reports, evaluations and lessons learned, only to rediscover the same lessons years later.
The problem is not knowledge.
The problem is using knowledge effectively.
This is the idea behind Virtual Economics.
Virtual Economics is an exploration of how economics, governance and artificial intelligence can help people and institutions make better decisions.
It starts from a simple proposition:
Better knowledge leads to better insight. Better insight leads to better choices. Better choices lead to better outcomes.
Artificial intelligence has the potential to transform every stage of that chain.
But technology alone is not the answer.
Institutions still need leadership. They still need incentives, accountability and trust. Politics still matters. Governance still matters. Human judgment still matters.
The challenge is not replacing people with machines.
The challenge is understanding how intelligent systems can augment human capability.
Over the coming months, I will use this platform to explore questions such as:
- How should boards make decisions in an age of AI?
- Can artificial intelligence strengthen institutional capability?
- How can organisations preserve and use institutional memory?
- What does effective governance look like when information is abundant?
- How can governments and international organisations use AI responsibly?
- What remains uniquely human in decision-making?
I do not claim to have all the answers.
Virtual Economics is a journey of exploration as much as a destination.
But I am convinced of one thing.
The most important challenge facing many institutions is no longer access to information. It is the ability to transform information into wisdom and action.
In the age of artificial intelligence, economics must concern itself not only with the allocation of resources, but with the quality of decisions.
That is the conversation I hope to begin.