Do Robots Increase Wealth Dispersion?

Francisco Gomes, Thomas Jansson and Yigitcan Karabulut

The Review of Financial Studies, 2024, vol. 37, issue 1, 119-160

Abstract: We document significant negative effects of exposure to increased automation at work on household wealth accumulation. Beyond the income and savings channels, we uncover a novel mechanism contributing to the negative wealth effects of automation that arises through the endogenous optimal portfolio decisions of households. We show that households rebalance their financial wealth away from the stock market in response to increased human capital risk induced by pervasive automation, thereby attaining lower wealth levels and relative positions in the wealth distribution. Our evidence suggests that the portfolio channel amplifies the inequality-enhancing effects of increased automation.Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.

JEL-codes: D1 D31 E21 G11 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/rfs/hhad050 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:oup:rfinst:v:37:y:2024:i:1:p:119-160.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Review of Financial Studies is currently edited by Itay Goldstein

More articles in The Review of Financial Studies from Society for Financial Studies Oxford University Press, Journals Department, 2001 Evans Road, Cary, NC 27513 USA.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().