Amazon employs more than 150 PhD economists, likely making it one of the largest employers in the field behind institutions like the U.S. Federal Reserve. The e-commerce giant’s employees and outside researchers develop methods to track metrics like inflation, customer interest and advertisement efficacy. (CNN)

Talking point: The work of these economists has been key in establishing the company’s market dominance in e-commerce. Amazon economists have used machine learning algorithms to automate decision-making on a large scale, helping with tasks like setting the lowest price for a product that can still turn a profit and where to put book stores and warehouses. That gives them an edge over smaller companies, who don’t have the funds for this scale of data collection or analysis.