---
title: "How to Do Research With AI: An Austrian Capital Theory Approach"
author: "Berg, C."
date: "2026-08-11"
url: "https://chrisberg.org/2026/08/how-to-do-research-with-ai-an-austrian-capital-theory-approach/"
type: "Journal articles"
published_in: "Australian Economic Papers 65(3): 340–348"
doi: "10.1111/1467-8454.70031"
topics: "Artificial intelligence, Austrian economics, Institutional economics and public choice, Productivity and innovation"
---

# How to Do Research With AI: An Austrian Capital Theory Approach

**Author:** Chris Berg
**Journal:** *Australian Economic Papers*, vol. 65 (2026), pp. 340–348
**Available at:** [Wiley Online Library](https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8454.70031)
**Cite:** Berg, C. (2026), “How to Do Research With AI: An Austrian Capital Theory Approach”, *Australian Economic Papers*, 65, 340–348.

**Abstract:** Scholarly outputs are the final goods of a heterogeneous, multi-stage, temporally extended production process. Austrian capital theory provides a way to analyse how artificial intelligence changes that process. This paper conceptualises large language models and related tools as a portfolio of capital goods whose productive role depends on how researchers, as entrepreneurs, specify and integrate them into a plan. AI adoption deepens and rearranges the capital structure of research. Because complementarity is plan-relative, the effects are intrinsically heterogeneous across researchers and fields, concentrating benefits where AI fills holes in an existing workflow and where complementary human capital is strongest. The framework yields implications for coauthorship incentives, writing quality as a screening signal, and the adjustment of evaluation and peer-review institutions.