Tag: inequality

What will automation do to the labor market if education quality doesn’t improve? COVID-19 offers a preview

What will automation do to the labor market if education quality doesn’t improve? COVID-19 offers a preview

Image Sewing machines in a garment factory, Accra, Ghana The effects of coronavirus (COVID-19) on the labor market have been devastating. There have been substantial job losses, and initial labor force surveys find these to be especially high for less educated workers. In developing countries, lockdowns have caused migrations, sometimes significant, from cities back to home provinces and villages where family members are employed in agriculture. Governments have instituted massive wage subsidy programs and income support to mitigate the loss in employment.

Job loss among less educated workers, out-migration of low-skilled urban workers back to the informal agricultural sector, and […]

The macroeconomic effects of automation and the role of COVID-19 in reinforcing their dynamics

The macroeconomic effects of automation and the role of COVID-19 in reinforcing their dynamics

Over the last decade, automation has increasingly been adopted as a full substitution of capital for labour—as opposed to a standard form of labour-augmenting technological change. Figure 1 illustrates this trend, charting the stock of operative industrial robots worldwide over time, based on International Federation of Robotics data (IFR 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019). The number of industrial robots increased by factor of three over the course of a decade, rising from a little over one million operative units in 2010 to a projected 3.15 million units in 2020. Over the same time, robots reportedly became capable of substituting for, […]

Why Deep Investment In Automation Results In More Jobs

Why Deep Investment In Automation Results In More Jobs

Why Deep Investment In Automation Results In More Jobs Getty As the coronavirus has swept across the globe, the swathes of redundancies that have followed in its wake have relegated the "robots are taking our jobs" narrative into the background. It was a narrative with a somewhat mixed logic at the best of times.

For instance, research from the London School of Economics (LSE) found that the introduction of industrial robots has actually increased wages for employees while also increasing the number of job opportunities for highly skilled people.

The researchers conducted a comprehensive analysis of the economic impact of industrial […]

Study finds stronger links between automation and inequality !!!

Study finds stronger links between automation and inequality !!!

This is part 3 of a three-part series examining the effects of robots and automation on employment, based on new research from economist and Institute Professor Daron Acemoglu.

Modern technology affects different workers in different ways. In some white-collar jobs — designer, engineer — people become more productive with sophisticated software at their side. In other cases, forms of automation, from robots to phone-answering systems, have simply replaced factory workers, receptionists, and many other kinds of employees.

Now a new study co-authored by an MIT economist suggests automation has a bigger impact on the labor market and income inequality than previous […]

Universal Basic Income: Economic liberation or the first step towards slavery?

Universal Basic Income: Economic liberation or the first step towards slavery?

Emanuel Pastreich, Candidate for President of the United States(Independent) During the Democratic primaries, Andrew Yang brought up universal basic income (UBI) and made it central in his vision for the economy of the United States. The theme was echoed by Bernie Sanders who cited the income guarantee that is offered by countries like Denmark and Finland as a possible model for future development.

Both Yang and Sanders argued that automation of production and other technological changes taking place in America has created a lag in job creation even as the economy flourishes, and that such a state can be responded […]

Universal Basic Income: Economic liberation or the first step towards slavery?

Universal Basic Income: Economic liberation or the first step towards slavery?

Emanuel Pastreich, Candidate for President of the United States(Independent) During the Democratic primaries, Andrew Yang brought up universal basic income (UBI) and made it central in his vision for the economy of the United States. The theme was echoed by Bernie Sanders who cited the income guarantee that is offered by countries like Denmark and Finland as a possible model for future development.

Both Yang and Sanders argued that automation of production and other technological changes taking place in America has created a lag in job creation even as the economy flourishes, and that such a state can be responded […]

Deaths of Despair and a Nation in Crisis

Deaths of Despair and a Nation in Crisis

Photo by Rebecca Wilcox, Purdue University Anne Case & Angus Deaton

The Princeton economists behind the “deaths of despair” thesis—Anne Case and Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton—talk with Irwin Stelzer and Jeffrey Gedmin about their new book, the flaws of our economic and health care systems, and whether our national crisis could spur needed reforms.

I rwin Stelzer and TAI Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Gedmin recently interviewed Anne Case and Sir Angus Deaton, the husband-and-wife team whose pioneering research on “deaths of despair” has reshaped the national debate. With their new book coming out amid a global pandemic, they discussed how its […]

Why Our Economy May Be Headed for a Decade of Depression

Why Our Economy May Be Headed for a Decade of Depression

The worst is yet to come? Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images In September 2006, Nouriel Roubini told the International Monetary Fund what it didn’t want to hear. Standing before an audience of economists at the organization’s headquarters, the New York University professor warned that the U.S. housing market would soon collapse — and, quite possibly, bring the global financial system down with it. Real-estate values had been propped up by unsustainably shady lending practices, Roubini explained. Once those prices came back to earth, millions of underwater homeowners would default on their mortgages, trillions of dollars worth of mortgage-backed securities would […]

An AI future set to take over post-Covid world

An AI future set to take over post-Covid world

Crucially, a technology that had till now been crawling — or at best, walking slowly — will now start sprinting. (Representational Image) Written by Seuj Saikia

Rabindranath Tagore once said, “Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark”. The darkness that looms over the world at this moment is the curse of the COVID-19 pandemic , while the bird of human freedom finds itself caged under lockdown, unable to fly. Enthused by the beacon of hope, human beings will soon start picking up the pieces of a shared future for humanity, but perhaps, […]

US researchers find that every robot replaces 3.3 jobs

US researchers find that every robot replaces 3.3 jobs

American researchers have calculated that every new industrial robot installed in the US between 1993 and 2007 replaced 3.3 jobs. But in a separate analysis of French industry from 2010 to 2015, they have also found that firms that adopt robots quickly became more productive and hire more workers, while their competitors fall behind and shed workers – with jobs again being reduced overall.

The results have been published in a series of three papers written by Professor Daron Acemoglu, an economist at MIT, with several co-authors. In one of the papers , Acemoglu and Dr Pascual Restrepo, an assistant […]