Technological Trajectories and Future of Employment
In recent years, much effort has been devoted to estimating the impact of automation on employment. Since scholars disagree so fundamentally about the consequences for employment, it could be useful to rephrase the question and ask whether and how technological change might have a positive impact on employment. Technological change can generate mechanisms able to more than compensate for job losses in the longer term. The topics addressed in this research area include the impact on jobs and productivity of new technologies, big data, artificial intelligence and robotics, and off- and re-shoring.
Winners and losers in the robot revolution: regional and sectoral interdependencies
Concerns are growing about the possible negative impact of robots on employment. We explore the sectoral and regional interdependencies of the impact of robot installations on employment rates. By combining IFR data on robot installations with employment statistics available from the Italian national statistical office, we will analyse the dependence along various time series, of robots and employment in the manufacturing industries and in Italian regions.
The crisis and regional unemployment in Europe: resilience and the role of technological capital
We will adopt an evolutionary view of resilience and analyse the role of technological capital for determining the degree of regional adaptation and resilience. It is acknowledged that technological capital plays a pivotal role in explaining regional economic growth (Fagerberg, 1994). However, few research papers examine the role of technological capital on economic fluctuations such as provoked the most recent economic crisis. We intend to fill this gap by conducting a descriptive and econometric analysis of 272 NUTS2-level regions in the EU27. Unemployment data and patent data will be used to measure regions’ respective degree of resilience and technological capital of regions.