New automation technologies affect workers in a heterogeneous manner according to their demographic characteristics, skills, and the tasks they perform. In this paper we study the effects of automation on labor market outcomes in a developing country, Chile. We focus our analysis on the...

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a powerful technology that can be utilized throughout a construction project lifecycle. Transition to incorporate AI technologies in the construction industry has been delayed due to the lack of know-how and research. There is also a knowledge gap regarding how...

We study changes in employment by occupations characterized by different degree of exposure to routinization in the six largest Latin American economies over the last two decades. We combine our own indicators of routine task content based on information from the Programme for the International...

Using a newly collected dataset of robot use at the plant level from 2014 to 2018, we provide the first microscopic portrait of robotisation in Germany and study the potential determinants of robot adoption. Our descriptive analysis uncovers five stylised facts concerning both extensive and,...

Social distancing has become worldwide the key public policy to be implemented during the COVID-19 epidemic and reducing the degree of proximity among workers turned out to be an important dimension. An emerging literature looks at the role of automation in supporting the work of humans but the...

In this paper we characterize workers’ vulnerability to automation in the near future in the six largest Latin American economies as a function of the exposure to routinization of the tasks that they perform and the potential automation of their occupation. We combine (i) indicators of...

How does population aging affect economic growth and factor shares in times of increasingly automatable production processes? The present paper addresses this question in a new macroeconomic model of automation where competitive firms perform tasks to produce output. Tasks require labor and...

Rapid technological progress poses challenges for labor markets. Automation can both displace and create jobs. Currently, an unprecedented digitalization of our economy is underway. Artificial intelligence has become a reality and machines are able to learn how to outperform humans in some...

We analyse how the adoption of technological innovations correlates with workers' perceived levels of job insecurity, and what factors mediate such relationship, by exploiting a recent, large and dedicated survey distributed to a representative sam- ple of Italian workers. The dedicated survey...

What drives investment in automation technologies? This paper documents a positive relationship between labor-friendly institutions and investment in industrial robots in a sample of developing and advanced economies. Institutions explain a substantial share of cross-country variation in...

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, technological change has led to the automation of existing tasks and the creation of new ones, as well as the reallocation of labor across occupations and industries. These processes have been costly to individual workers, but labor demand has...

While economic theory suggests substitutability between labor and capital, little evidence exists regarding the causal effect of labor supply on inventing labor-saving technologies. We analyze the impact of exogenous changes in regional labor supply on automation innovation by exploiting an...

This paper examines recent technological developments and how they could impact efforts by policymakers and political leaders in developing countries to harness trade and investment liberalization to achieve economic development outcomes. It begins by discussing some of the proven elements to...

While economic theory suggests substitutability between labor and capital, little evidence exists regarding the causal effect of labor supply on inventing labor-saving technologies. We analyze the impact of exogenous changes in regional labor supply on automation innovation by exploiting an...

Recent evidence for the U.S. suggests that recessions play a crucial role in promoting automation and the reallocation of productive resources, which in turn increase aggregate productivity and lead to a higher standard of living. I present evidence suggesting that the same is true in Canada. In...

The automation of work tasks due to technological change increases the pressure on employees whose workplaces consist largely of such activities. Further training is an important way of adapting skills and enabling the performance of tasks that cannot be automated and are required in modern...

While economic theory suggests substitutability between labor and capital, little evidence exists regarding the causal effect of labor supply on inventing labor-saving technologies. We analyze the impact of exogenous changes in regional labor supply on automation innovation by exploiting an...

Using the World Bank's Enterprise Survey for the Philippines, our analysis found that, on average, firms that deployed partial or full automation in their operations were more likely to hire more workers than fewer relative to their counterpart firms. These results suggest a net positive...

The U.S. economy has experienced a significant drop in the fraction of the population employed in middle wage, "routine task-intensive" occupations. Applying machine learning techniques, we identify characteristics of those who used to be employed in such occupations and show they are now less...

We show, theoretically and empirically, that the effects of technological change associated with automation and offshoring on the labor market can substantially deviate from standard neoclassical conclusions when search frictions hinder efficient assortative matching between firms with...

Using novel matched employer-employee register data with firm-level information on the introduction of industrial robots, this paper analysis the impact of robots on the wages of workers in the manufacturing sector. The results show that industrial robots increase wages for high-skilled workers...

The U.S. economy has experienced a significant drop in the fraction of the population employed in middle wage, "routine task-intensive" occupations. Applying machine learning techniques, we identify characteristics of those who used to be employed in such occupations and show they are now less...

Using a newly collected dataset with plant-level information of robot use from 2014 to 2018, we provide the first microscopic portrait of robotisation in Germany and study the potential determinants of robot adoption. Our descriptive analysis uncovers five stylised facts concerning both...

In this paper we characterize workers’ vulnerability to automation in the near future in Argentina as a function of the exposure to routinization of the tasks that they perform and the potential automation of their occupation. In order to do that we combine (i) indicators of potential...

Could robotization make the gender pay gap worse? We provide the first large-scale evidence on the impact of industrial robots on the gender pay gap using data from 20 European countries. We show that robot adoption increases both male and female earnings but also increases the gender pay gap....

We use French data over the 1994-2013 period to study how imports of industrial robots affect firm-level outcomes. Compared to other firms operating in the same 5-digit sector, robot importers are larger, more productive, and employ a higher share of managers and engineers. Over time, robot...

The interplay between labour institutions and the adoption of automation technologies remains poorly understood. Specifically, there is little evidence on how the nature of industrial relations shapes technological choices at the workplace level. Using a large sample of more than 20000 European...

Recent evidence suggests that recessions play a crucial role in promoting automation and the reallocation of productive resources. Consistent with this, I show that in the three previous Canadian recessions, routine jobs were disproportionately lost. COVID-19 is likely to have a similar impact,...

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, technological change has led to the automation of existing tasks and the creation of new ones, as well as the reallocation of labor across occupations and industries. These processes have been costly to individual workers, but labor demand has...

We modify the concept of the middle-income trap (MIT) against the background of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the (future) challenges of automation (creating the concept of the "MIT 2.0") and discuss the implications for developing Asia. In particular, we analyze the impacts of...