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Threats and opportunities in the digital era: automation spikes and employment dynamics

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  • Giacomo Domini
  • Marco Grazzi
  • Daniele Moschella
  • Tania Treibich

Abstract

This paper investigates how investment in automation-intensive goods impacts on worker flows at the firm level and, within firms, across occupational categories. Resorting to an integrated dataset encompassing detailed information on firms, their imports, and employer-employee data for French manufacturing employers over 2002-2015, we identify 'automation spikes' using imports of intermediates embedding automation technologies and then test their impact on employment dynamics. We find that automation spikes are positively correlated with preceding and contemporaneous growth in employment, mainly due to lower separation rates of investing firms. These differential patterns of net and gross worker flows do not appear to change significantly across different types of workers (occupational categories, 'techies', routine-intensive vs. non routine-intensive jobs).

Suggested Citation

  • Giacomo Domini & Marco Grazzi & Daniele Moschella & Tania Treibich, 2019. "Threats and opportunities in the digital era: automation spikes and employment dynamics," LEM Papers Series 2019/22, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.
    • Handle: RePEc:ssa:lemwps:2019/22
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Automation; Skills; Technological Change; Gross Worker Flows.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D25 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Intertemporal Firm Choice: Investment, Capacity, and Financing
    • J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand
    • L25 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Performance
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes

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