Join the Department of Economics for a critical discussion of the economic effects of automation.
Speaker: Aseem Patel, University of Essex.
Abstract
Using French matched employer-employee data, Aseem will provide empirical evidence that large firms are more likely to adopt automation capital, which in turn leads to a sustained increase in their productivity and labor market power.
Given this evidence, Aseem quantify the efficiency costs of automation in a general equilibrium model incorporating oligopsonistic labor markets, automation adoption choice, occupational choice, labor force participation choice, and entry.
Aseem calibrate the model using the French manufacturing sector and find that:
- automation increases output and welfare
- welfare gains are unequally distributed across workers
- automation increases both within- and between-firm misallocation
- 11% of the output gains and 43% of the welfare gains from automation are lost due to labor market power.
About the speaker
Aseem Patel is a Lecturer in Economics at the University of Essex.
His research interests focus on the macroeconomics of labour markets, including topics such as wage stagnation, wage inequality, imperfect competition in labour markets and the gender wage gap.
Some of his recent work on these areas has been published in Econometrica and the Journal of the European Economic Association.
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