Is the AI boom a bubble, and should we be worried?

Robin Greenwood (Harvard Business School) joins formerRiksbank Governor Stefan Ingves to unpack why bubbles form, why they often start with something genuinely transformative, and what turns a boom into a real economic threat.

From dot-com to the 2008 Global Financial Crisis to today's AI buildout, Greenwood argues rising prices alone aren't the danger.

It's when booms collide with rapid credit growth and leverage that things turn risky. They dig into why even seasoned investors get swept up, how competition undermines "unstoppable" growth stories, cracks forming in private credit, and whether policymakers can catch trouble in time.

Greenwood also breaks down the "red zone," periods when credit growth and asset prices rise together, historically pushing the odds of a financial crisis within three years from about 8% to 40%.

They discuss: as AI spending increasingly needs outsidefinancing, could this largely equity-funded boom turn into something riskier?

Guest: Robin Greenwood is the George Gund Professor of finance and Banking at Harvard Business School.

Host: Stefan Ingves, former Governor of theRiksbank, and Senior Fellow at Swedish House of Finance

Topics:

Financial bubbles, AI investment, artificial intelligence, data centers, private credit, financial crises, credit booms, leverage, financial stability, behavioral finance, investor psychology, competition, monetary policy, macroprudential policy, asset prices.

In this episode of Central Questions, former RiksbankGovernor Stefan Ingves speaks with Professor Mariassunta Giannetti of the Stockholm School of Economics and Swedish House of Finance about where financial fragility sits today.

They discuss why crises keep recurring, how regulation canpush risk outside the banking system, whether negative interest rates actually worked, what bond funds and private credit mean for financial stability, and why green finance may need regulation rather than market incentives alone.

Topics: financial crises, Basel III, shadow banking, non-bank financial intermediaries, private credit, bond funds, negative interest rates, quantitative easing, bank liquidity, trade credit, sustainability, and climate finance.

Guest: Mariassunta Giannetti, Researcher at the Swedish House of Finance and Professor of Finance at the Stockholm School of Economics

Host: Stefan Ingves, former Governor of the Riksbank and Senior Fellow at Swedish House of Finance

Two hundred and fifty years after Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, the economy looks very different from the world he described.

Firms are bigger. Production is more centralized. AI and automation are changing what companies can do at scale. And yet markets still matter, perhaps more than ever, in deciding which firms rise, which fall, and how innovation spreads.

In this episode of Central Questions, Stefan Ingves speaks with Yueran Ma, Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, about the rise of large corporations, the changing role of capital and labor, and what Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Hayek can still teach us about today’s economy.

They discuss why the largest firms now account for a growing share of output and assets, why employment has not concentrated in the same way, what AI could mean for productivity and inequality, and why financial markets may be crucial for spreading the gains from capital more broadly.

Guest: Yueran Ma, Professor of Finance, University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Host: Stefan Ingves, former Governor of the Riksbank and Senior Fellow at Swedish House of Finance

Topics: Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Yueran Ma, Stefan Ingves, Central Questions, Swedish House of Finance, large firms, corporations, AI, automation, capital deepening, productivity, corporate finance, economic growth, financial markets, capitalism, Karl Marx, Hayek, visible hand, invisible hand, firm concentration, monetary policy, innovation, Chicago Booth

In this episode of Central Questions, former RiksbankGovernor Stefan Ingves speaks with SHoF’s Paolo Sodini about the hidden logic behind how households build—and lose—wealth. They cover household finance, investing mistakes, diversification, mortgage risk, financial literacy, andwealth inequality.

(0:29) Sweden’s Financial Crisis & Household Debt

(2:16) Swedish Data & the Rise of Household Finance

(4:48) The 2 Types of Financial Risk08:19 How Households Should Build Financial Buffers

(10:49) Fixed vs Variable Mortgage Rates

(14:23) Why Financial Literacy Matters

(18:24) The Biggest Investing Mistakes People Make

(19:33) Why Expensive Mutual Funds Often Fail

(21:48) Why Financial Literacy Should Start Early

(24:48) Why Financial Products Are Too Complicated

(26:43) What Swedish Data Reveals About Wealth

(27:50) Why Wealth Inequality Is Rising

(29:24) Why Rich Investors Keep Gambling

(30:44) Real Estate & Middle-Class Wealth Building

(33:50) Skill vs Luck in Investing

(35:07) “Too Good To Be True” Investments

(36:37) Equality vs Entrepreneurship

(37:53) Why Rich Families Stay Rich

(40:04) Sweden’s Housing Market Problem

(40:41) Why Wealth Data Matters

(44:37) How Many Mutual Funds Do You Really Need?

(45:15) Why Financial Advice Needs Regulation

(47:56) Final Advice on Investing & Wealth

Guest: Paolo Sodini, Researcher at the Swedish Houseof Finance and Professor of Finance at the Stockholm School of Economics

Host: Stefan Ingves, former Governor of the Riksbank and Senior Fellowat Swedish House of Finance

Topics: household finance, investing, personal finance,financial literacy, wealth inequality, diversification, mortgages, mutual funds, economics

In this episode, Marieke Bos, researcher at Swedish House of Finance, moderates a panel discussion Prof Ramadorai (Imperial College London), Erik Thedéen (Finanspektionen), and Sara Öhrvall (Axel Johnson) on algorithmic discrimination in credit markets and the distributional consequences of new machine learning technologies applied in credit screening.

Investors are inundated with more data than ever before. What does an influx of “high-dimensional data” mean for financial forecasting, asset pricing and investment?

Using AI and Machine learning in asset pricing and asset management is in the midst of a boom. But are portfolios based on these richly parameterized models well understood?

Globally, there is a debate over how to develop payment systems. Effective approaches are far from settled. Emerging digital currencies, in particular, have significant implications for commercial banking and currency competition. In this video, Darrell Duffie  of Stanford University outlines the related policy concerns and approaches, together with Swedish experts. 

Participants:

A conversation with the Governor of Sveriges Riksbank Stefan Ingves and Yale's Professor Gary Gorton on how we might think about digital currencies and decentralised finance.

In this seminar, Professor Starks talked about considerations regarding environment, social and governance (ESG) investing, starting with the differentiation in investor motivations: financial risk and return considerations (i.e., ESG value), nonpecuniary preferences (i.e., ESG values), or a combination of the two.

From a high level perspective, she addressed questions regarding investment approaches, such as whether to employ a negative screening approach or a positive tilt to the portfolio; how to think about integrating ESG principles into the investment process as well as engaging firm management on ESG principles; the role of third-party ESG ratings; the questions surrounding ESG portfolio disclosures and regulatory requirements, and the evidence that exists on the effects and effectiveness of these issues.