James
Bessen

James Bessen, an economist and technologist, serves as Executive Director of the Technology & Policy Research Initiative at Boston University. He has also been a successful innovator and CEO of a software company.

Bessen studies the major economic impacts of technology on society (see New York Times profile), writing academic papers, magazine articles, and books. His latest book, The New Goliaths (Yale 2022), argues that major firms’ investments in proprietary software systems have allowed them to increase their dominance of industries, slowing aggregate innovation and raising income inequality.