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IZA NewsResearchJuly 31, 2018

Labor productivity and the digital economy

Second joint IZA/OECD workshop held in Paris

© iStockphoto.com/NicoElNino

How do digitalization and automation affect labor productivity and the functioning of labor markets in general? The impact of new technologies, one of the key questions regarding the future of work, was at the focus of the second annual workshop of the IZA program area “Labor in the Macroeconomy” jointly organized with the OECD. Continuing the successful cooperation between both institutions, 18 researchers presented their work.

Keynote speeches were given by Jens Suedekum (pictured on the right) and Juan F. Jimeno, who discussed the empirical effects of robots on the evolution of German local labor markets and their theoretical impact on macroeconomic growth and distribution, respectively.

Felix Koenig presented his paper “Superstar Earners and Market Size: Evidence from the Entertainment Industry.” Exploiting the roll-out of television in the US in the post-war years as a quasi-experiment, he documents the substantial effect of entertainers’ earnings from this sudden increase in market size. The estimates imply that a doubling of the market size increases top incomes by about 10%, providing new evidence on the magnitude of the superstar effect that has been difficult to measure to date.

In “The UK Education Expansion and Technological change,” Wenchao Jin and her co-authors seek to explain the fact that despite tremendous educational expansion, UK graduate wage premiums remained largely unchanged across cohorts. They isolate different organizational firm structures as a potential explanation, rejecting several alternatives. According to this theory, firms in the UK adapted by altering their organizational structures towards less centralized firms, which are better suited to a well-educated workforce.

Duncan Roth presented the paper “Routine Tasks and Recovery from Mass Layoffs” on the long-term costs of job loss by an occupation’s degree of routine density. The authors find that workers in routine-intensive occupations suffer stronger negative effects on earnings and re-entry probabilities. This might be explained by loss of human capital in routine-intensive occupations.

Download all the presented papers below (presenting authors mentioned first).

Conference papers:

Technology and the Future of Work: Aggregate Employment Effects of Digitization Ulrich Zierahn, Melanie Arntz, Terry Gregory Automation Biased Technology and Employment Structures in China: 1990 to 2015 Zhong Zhao, Peng Ge, Wenkai Sun Growth with a Digital Sector Werner Roeger, Eva Nalbach Labor Market Effects of Crowdwork in EU and US: An Empirical Investigation Michele Cantarella, Chiara Strozzi Controlling Working Crowds: The Impact of Digitalization on Worker Autonomy and Monitoring across Hierarchical Levels Elisa Gerten, Michael Beckmann, Lutz Bellmann Working from Home: Heterogenous Effects on Hours Worked and Wages Francesco Berlingieri, Melanie Arntz Are Robots Killing Jobs? Evidence from Germany Jens Suedekum, Wolfgang Dauth, Sebastian Findeisen, Nicole Wößner, Sarra Ben Yahmed Honey, Robots Shrunk My Wage! Native-Immigrant Wage Gaps and the Growing Importance of Social Skills Tao Song Superstar Earners and Market Size: Evidence from the Entertainment Industry Felix Koenig Broadband Internet, Digital Temptations and Sleep Luca Stella, Francesco C. Billari, Osea Giuntella The Impact of Investments in New Digital Technologies on Wages – Worker-level Evidence from Germany Sabrina Genz, Markus Janser, Florian Lehmer Routine Tasks and Recovery from Mass Layoffs Duncan Roth, Uwe Blien, , Wolfgang Dauth Unemployment and Online Labor Steffen Viete, Kathrin Borchert, Matthas Hirth, Michael Kummer, Ulrich Laitenberger, Olga Slivko Does the Internet Help Unemployed Job Seekers Find a Job? Evidence from the Broadband Internet Expansion in Germany Nicole Gürtzgen, Andre Nolte, Laura Pohlan, Gerard J. van den Berg Digitalization Risk of Occupations and Labor Market Transitions Alina Sorgner, Frank M. Fossen From Secular Stagnation to Robocalypse? Implications of Demographic and Technological Changes Juan F. Jimeno, Henrique Basso Which Skills for the Digital Era? A Returns to Skills Analysis Luca Marcolin, Robert Grundke, Mariagrazia Squicciarini, The Linh Bao Nguyen The UK Education Expansion and Technological Change Wenchao Jin, Richard Blundell, David Green Understanding Productivity Dynamics: A Task Taxonomy Approach Tiago Fonseca, Francisco Lima, Sonia C. Pereira

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