Autonomous AI agents could transform markets, firms, and financial institutions while challenging the assumptions that underpin economic coordination. Two new papers examine how AI may reshape bargaining, decision-making, market stability, and institutional trust and why humans may struggle to understand or anticipate the actions of increasingly capable AI systems.

(Open Access)  As AI infrastructure spending races past $2.9 trillion through 2028, private credit has quietly become one of its biggest financiers with AI-related deals tripling to 34% in 2025. This issue traces how a shock to AI valuations or earnings could transmit through bank credit lines and data-center financing straight into an already-untested $2 trillion private credit market.

(Open Access) Two new 2026 papers tackle how to measure AI’s economic footprint: one diagnoses why different AI datasets give conflicting answers, the other shows equity markets already price AI exposure directly with high-AI-beta firms earning a significant premium.

Large language models are becoming the financial advisors of choice for millions. Two new 2026 working papers show that LLM advice broadly follows sound economic principles, nudging users toward diversified equity and prudent saving. Yet it relies on heuristics and, strikingly, recommends lower equity allocations to women than to otherwise identical men.