Robert Cohen

Bio:

I am an economist and senior fellow at the Economic Strategy Institute, where I direct a study of the impact of cloud computing, machine learning and artificial intelligence on the U.S. economy. My current research is on the impact of moving to an "intelligent" software economy. This project analyzes the economic impact of firms deploying cloud services, the Internet of Things, Generative Artificial Intelligence and machine learning. I argue that this combination of the "intelligent" software services – cloud, software, Gen AI and ML -- is a pervasive, Twenty-First Century, General-Purpose Technology. I believe it is likely to reshape the economy very much like electricity and the internal combustion engine transformed the Twentieth Century’s economy. 

I have employed input/output analysis to forecast US investment and productivity changes and employment impacts of emerging technologies. Cisco, Industria Macchine Automatiche S.p.A, the Berggruen Foundation, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Brocade Communications, and the OECD have sponsored this work. My studies of the impact of grid computing on North Carolina and the US used a similar approach, with support from the NC Rural Internet Access Authority, IBM, AT&T, Intel, Juniper Networks, MCI, Corning, Applied Materials, and Cadence. With support from Japan's AIST, IBM, Cisco, NTT Data, and Intel, I repeated this analysis for Japan. 

I have worked with startups including Election.com (Board of Advisors), Projectavision (bought by Texas Instruments), IoTium, the Virtual Corporation and Decathlon. I prepared financial plans for most of these firms. I also introduced Projectavision to funding sources at DARPA, and NIST, where it obtained initial support for its products.

I have also been a consultant. I worked closely with senior management at firms such as Lucent to develop a competitive analysis of markets for optical networking equipment, data storage and communications software. I also consulted for: the European Commission’s Communications Directorate, the United Nations’ UNIDO, UNCTAD, ECLAC and the U.N. Center on Transnational Corporations; the U.S. Departments of Commerce, Labor and Housing and Urban Development; the Senate Banking Committee; and the National Security Agency. For the European Commission, I supported negotiations between the European Commission and the  U.S. government that resulted in a common US-European adoption of the TCP/IP protocol. I also helped the Commission develop its first industry-university-government projects related to the Internet, electronics and communications. 

I served on the FCC working party on HDTV, which won an Emmy for its work. I was also a member of the NSF JTEC committee to study Japan’s policies for HDTV. Much of this work grew out of my association with the MIT-based Farnsworth group in the 1980s, an influential academic group on broadband communications and the future of media. It influenced early Congressional legislation on the Internet and computing. I also worked on the MIT Auto Project, where I examined supply chains in the auto industry. 

I have been Associate Professor of International Business and Finance at New York University’s Stern Business School, Associate Professor of Finance and Economics at York College of the City University of New York, and Senior International Economist at the Futures Group.