Automation and Inequality [23.01.20]
Machine workforce is on the rise and the great wave of automation will influence all of us. Technical foundations for a comprehensive change in working environments are laid and breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and robotics will cause the replacement of human workforce in many areas, as can be witnessed already today when exchanging with chatbots. This development is accompanied by critical debates, especially with regard to social, economic and health-related effects. But how can politics control these developments? In a recent publication, a research team with participation from UHOH presents a model that analyses and predicts the social effects of automation and attempts to provide forecasts on the effects of political measures.
https://pixabay.com/photos/hand-robot-human-binary-finger-2692450/
Publication:
Prettner, Klaus; Strulik, Holger (2019): Innovation, automation, and inequality. Policy challenges in the race against the machine. In: Journal of Monetary Economics. DOI: 10.1016/j.jmoneco.2019.10.012.
Abstract:
The effects of automation on economic growth, education, and inequality are analyzed using an R&D-driven growth model with endogenous education in which high-skilled workers are complements to machines and low-skilled workers are substitutes for machines. The model predicts that automation leads to an increasing share of college graduates, increasing income and wealth inequality, and a declining labor share. We show that standard policy suggestions for the age of automation can trigger unintended side effects on inequality, growth, and welfare, irrespective of whether they are financed by progressive wage taxation or by a robot tax.
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Read more [in German only]:
Automatisierung führt zu gesellschaftlicher Ungleichheit
Modellrechnung von Wirtschaftswissenschaftlern: Robotersteuer hilft nicht gegen soziale Ungleichheit
There are other research groups at the University of Hohenheim examining the effects of changing working environments, e.g. the team of Prof. Dr. Caroline Ruiner from the Department of Sociology.
