Automation and Public Policy Preferences

Colombe Ladreit

No 22191, BAFFI CAREFIN Working Papers from BAFFI CAREFIN, Centre for Applied Research on International Markets Banking Finance and Regulation, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy

Abstract: Automation and globalization triggered sizeable labor market adjustments in the US. While the backlash against globalization has been well-identified in the political economy literature, this is not the case for automation. Using a survey experiment, we study how Americans update their public policy preferences after priming them with an automation story. We show it does not increase their support for government intervention and uncover two explanatory channels behind it: fairness considerations and perceived vulnerability to automation. First, respondents do not see automation as particularly unfair to workers and think that firms are justified in automating. Second, our automation treatment increases respondents'anxiety regarding automation's impact on American jobs in general but not on their own occupations. Hence, while an automation prime increases average anxiety levels, respondents do not feel personally threatened by robots. Finally, we find that respondents are less likely to support nationalist policies once they know the cause of the shock is automation. This suggests that misperceptions about the cause of the shock have partly driven the increase in anti-trade and anti-immigration sentiment following robot adoption. Classification-JEL :

Pages: 56
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pol
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