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Given our societal emphasis on the pace of 'progress', often overlooking its direction, we face a multitude of existential challenges [1]. These range from the looming threat of nuclear warfare and escalating global warming to the risk of totalitarian regimes and potential subjugation by artificial intelligence. How does economics provide solutions or frameworks to address them?

[1] Ord, Toby. The precipice: Existential risk and the future of humanity. Hachette Books, 2020. (Review)

Edit: I'm primarily interested in examples of seminal papers that address various existential threats to society. In other words, if one aims to apply economic tools to mitigate these threats, where should one seek inspiration?

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  • $\begingroup$ Hi, questions that look for opinions are off topic on this site. This is not discussion forum. I edited out the part where you ask about opinions. In addition this is still quite broad question you should consider narrowing it down $\endgroup$
    – 1muflon1 ♦
    Commented May 18, 2023 at 11:58
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    $\begingroup$ @1muflon1 Thanks for your edit and your feedback. $\endgroup$
    – Pavel Kocourek
    Commented May 18, 2023 at 12:29
  • $\begingroup$ This is a non-answer, but I think it is important to note that the salience of these "existantial risks" have received criticism for multiple angles, e.g.; The Dangerous Ideas of “Longtermism” and “Existential Risk” $\endgroup$
    – Giskard
    Commented May 22, 2023 at 9:02

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These are broad areas and no subject alone covers them. Additionally, there are no solutions to policy problems only trade-offs. Moreover, science by its nature can never provide 'solution' to a policy question, the role of science in science-based policy making is just to clarify the trade-offs not to prescribe what people should do, for that you need moral philosophy.

When it comes to economics tools that can be used to analyze some of the problems you mentioned.

  • nuclear warfare: The strategic decision making that can be done to minimize chance of nuclear war can be modeled through game theory which is a subfield of microeconomics. You can see example game theory used in this area in Schelling (1966), Arms and Influence.

  • global warming: Here economics can be used to analyze which way or policy of reducing greenhouse gasses is most efficient. In addition, since society does not have only one single goal (e.g. reducing carbon) but multiple goals (e.g. reduce poverty) economics can clarify the trade-off between pursuing these goals. You can see some example of this being done in The Climate Casino by Nordhaus (2013).

  • totalitarian regimes: There are subfields of economics that analyze how totalitarian regimes operate. More specifically public choice theory analyzes how different political regimes operate and make decisions. You can have look at overview of these tools in selected chapters from Public Choice III.

  • Risks of Rogue AI: Similarly to nuclear warfare you can probably use game theory to strategically analyze the problem.

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  • $\begingroup$ Schelling has indeed modeled nuclear war using game theory, but let us not forget his other influential modelling work, where he calculated that given the utilities napalm bombardment would cause the North Vietnamese to surrender. $\endgroup$
    – Giskard
    Commented May 18, 2023 at 14:40
  • $\begingroup$ (-1) I find that the answer above grossly misrepresents the abilities of game theory and choice theory to provide actual analysis/answers (anything beyond mathified punditry) to these problems. Note that all connections to empirical data are tenuous. $\endgroup$
    – Giskard
    Commented May 18, 2023 at 14:45
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    $\begingroup$ @Giskard how do I misrepresent the abilities of game theory in the post above? 1. All I say that game theory has tools to model such interactions 2. I specifically in preamble mention that science never provides answers to policy questions. 3. Its completely uncontroversial to say game theory can be used to model strategic interactions. We can talk about how well predictions of that or this model matches reality but I can't really see how anyone, except for radical contrarian, can argue that it cannot be used to analyze such situation. That is prima facie wrong since people (and i even $\endgroup$
    – 1muflon1 ♦
    Commented May 18, 2023 at 15:51
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    $\begingroup$ provided example of Schelling) do use game theory for such analysis. $\endgroup$
    – 1muflon1 ♦
    Commented May 18, 2023 at 15:53
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    $\begingroup$ In addition there are peer reviewed papers showing that game theory is being used by military, for example in designing AI defence systems ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8838118. So even military clearly believes there is utility in using game theory. Some game theory models are even used to refine Israel's Iron Dome which seems to be working well pdf.sciencedirectassets.com/271700/1-s2.0-S0377221717X00040/… so clearly game theory is not completely useless in analyzing such problems $\endgroup$
    – 1muflon1 ♦
    Commented May 18, 2023 at 16:00

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