Mardi 7 février 2023

Le 7 février 2023

Le prochain séminaire du GAINS a lieu le 7 février de 10h30 à 12h00 (à distance via ZOOM). 

Lucas PARMENTIER (Université de La Réunion) présentera un papier intitulé Robots and the Unbalanced Growth of High-Skilled Jobs.

Abstract : In this paper I document that between 2000 and 2014 the growth of the employment of high-skilled workers was dampened in the US labor markets highly exposed to robots compared to those lowly exposed, yielding an unbalanced growth of high-skilled jobs. A model is built to explore the mechanisms explaining this unbalanced growth. The model shows that robotization and high-skill biased technological change are two opposite forces that shape the employment of high-skilled workers. In lowly robotised labor markets high-skilled workers stole the tasks of low-skilled workers and gained jobs due to technological change. In highly robotised labor markets robotization decreased the wage of low-skilled workers and maintained their comparative advantage over high-skilled workers on the tasks they was initially performing. This prevented high-skilled workers to steal their tasks and to gain more jobs. I estimate a reduced-form model that emphases the relationship between robotization and high-skill employment. I find that between 2000 and 2014 each additional robot per thousand workers dampened increases in high-skill employment-to-population ratios by 0.14-0.18 point in highly-robotised labor markets compared to labor markets with no robotization. This means that each robot prevented the creation of 3 high-skilled jobs.