Technological change, automation and employment: A Short review of theory and evidence

K Ramaswamy

Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai Working Papers from Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India

Abstract: A selective survey of recent papers in the area of technological change, automation and employment is presented. The objective is to convey analytical ideas and the empirical evidence that have informed studies in this area of contemporary policy relevance. Automation occurs when a machine does work that might previously have been done by a person. How robots and automation affect the availability of jobs for labor force? There are very few emerging studies that address the issue with detailed data on robots usage and employment in different sectors of the economy. Based on our review of available studies and empirical evidence the following statements can be made: (1) Increasing automation and robots adoption do not seem to cause loss of employment in the aggregate (2) Low skilled workers in routine jobs are more likely to suffer job losses. (3) There will be demand for new types of skilled workers or new specializations within occupations. Prospective automation intensifies the degree of uncertainty in labor markets across countries.

Keywords: Technological change; Automation; Robots; Skill Bias; employment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J20 J23 J24 O30 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2018-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.igidr.ac.in/pdf/publication/WP-2018-002.pdf (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:ind:igiwpp:2018-002

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai Working Papers from Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Shamprasad M. Pujar ().