Concerns that new digital technologies, artificial intelligence, and robotics will create widespread technological non-employment are now widespread. Various recent labour market trends, ranging from declines in US labour force participation to increases in wage inequality and the share of capital in national income, are seen as harbingers of this new normal (e.g. Brynjolfsson and McAfee 2012, Akst 2014, Autor 2015, Karabarbounis and Neiman 2014, Oberfield and Raval 2014). A major shortcoming of the typical arguments about technological non-employment is that there is no clear reason why the effect of new technologies will be different this time than in the […]
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