 Job creation and destruction in the digital age: Assessing heterogeneous effects across European Union countriesAnabela Marques Santos, Javier Barbero, Simone Salotti and Andrea Conte Economic Modelling, 2023, vol. 126, issue C Abstract: Do investments in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) create jobs? The literature suggests that, even if innovations are labour saving, there may be compensating mechanisms that lead to a positive employment effect. We investigate this issue using country-level data for the European Union from 1995 to 2019. The results suggest an average positive net effect of ICT investment on total employment. An increase of €100,000 in the ICT investment stock is associated with an average increase of 3.3 jobs in the European Union. However, the magnitude of the impact is heterogeneous across countries. The differences are explained by the country-specific characteristics of ICT investment (non-machine versus machine-based) and the existing skill endowment of the labour force. Moreover, the rate of return on investment expressed in terms of net job creation tends to decline over time, as the share of high-skilled workers in the market increases. Keywords: Digitalisation; Employment; Skills; Europe (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecmode:v:126:y:2023:i:c:s0264999323002171 DOI: 10.1016/j.econmod.2023.106405 Access Statistics for this article Economic Modelling is currently edited by S. Hall and P. Pauly More articles in Economic Modelling from Elsevier |
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