We study the economic incentives for automation when labor and machines are perfect substitutes. Labor may still be employed in production, even when it is a costlier input than robots on a productivity-adjusted basis. This occurs if firms face uninsurable idiosyncratic risk, adjusting the stock...

We analyze evidence from US states to compute the open economy relative multiplier along the lines of Nakamura and Steinsson (2014). Identification of exogenous government spending shocks is achieved by exploiting the secular tendency of some states to receive a disproportionate share of...

The study provides forward-looking estimates for economic damages from floods and tropical cyclones (TC) for a wide range of countries using global datasets. Damages are estimated for three Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scenarios and aggregated at the country level, building...

China and Africa have forged a strong economic relationship since China's accession to the WTO in 2001. This paper examines the evolution of these economic ties starting in the early 2000s, and the subsequent shift in the relationship triggered by the commodity price collapse in 2015 and by the...

We study the impact of employment protection legislation (EPL) on firms’ innovation choices, through an event-study analysis of several labor market reforms occurring in Europe over 2000-2016. Data on firms’ technology adoption from the Community Innovation Survey reveal that substantial...

We argue that the US tax system is biased against labor and in favor of capital and has become more so in recent years. As a consequence, it has promoted inefficiently high levels of automation. Moving from the US tax system in the 2010s to optimal taxation of capital and labor would raise...

We argue that the US tax system is biased against labor and in favor of capital and has become more so in recent years. As a consequence, it has promoted inefficiently high levels of automation. Moving from the US tax system in the 2010s to optimal taxation of capital and labor would raise...

The rapid productivity gains achieved by technological innovations in the 20th century have slowed in recent decades. This has come at a time of increased market concentration. In this paper, I explore how dominant companies in concentrated sectors have siphoned off inventors that might have...