Partial Job Automation

Andre Mouton ()
Additional contact information
Andre Mouton: Wake Forest University, Economics Department, Postal: 1834 Wake Forest Road, Winston-Salem, NC, 2709, https://sites.google.com/view/andremouton

No 125, Working Papers from Wake Forest University, Economics Department

Abstract: I study the short-term and long-run effects of automation when jobs consist of multiple tasks. I present survey-based evidence that task content is heterogeneous within jobs, and that task composition changes with technology use. An assignment-based model predicts that task-level automation generates competing displacement and augmentation effects, which endogenously give rise to labor polarization - but only in the short-run, with wage inequality and job losses abating as capital prices fall. The structurally estimated model is better able to account for the historical relationships between occupational PC use, wages, and employment, but delivers predictions regarding tax policy and the effects of AI adoption that diverge sharply from conventional models of job-level automation.

Keywords: Automation; Polarization; Capital-Labor Substitution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 J23 J24 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 48 pages
Date: 2025-03-27
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/18JJWZ4b_uduEvB6JD ... Khk/view?usp=sharing Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ris:wfuewp:0125

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Wake Forest University, Economics Department Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Don Shegog ().