Cristian Alonso

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About

Cristian Alonso is an economist whose research sits at the critical intersection of artificial intelligence, technological change, and global economic inequality. His most influential work centers on understanding how the AI revolution will reshape economic outcomes across countries at different stages of development, with particular concern for whether emerging and developing economies risk being left behind as advanced nations harness transformative technologies. Alonso's landmark contribution, "Will the AI Revolution Cause a Great Divergence?", has accumulated over 70 citations across multiple versions, making it one of the more widely engaged analyses of AI's macroeconomic implications. The paper advances an elegant framework modeling the AI revolution as a productivity surge in a form of capital that substitutes pervasively for labor — a deceptively simple assumption with profound consequences for understanding income divergence between rich and poor nations. His work challenges optimistic narratives about technology as a universal equalizer, instead raising sobering questions about whether AI could entrench and widen global inequalities. Through rigorous yet accessible economic modeling, Alonso has made a meaningful contribution to policy debates at institutions concerned with global development, offering researchers and policymakers an essential lens for anticipating and potentially mitigating the uneven distributional effects of the coming AI era.