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2. Robotisation, Employment and Industrial Growth Intertwined Across Global Value Chains
- Author:
- Mahdi Ghodsi, Oliver Reiter, Robert Stehrer, and Roman Stöllinger
- Publication Date:
- 04-2020
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
- Abstract:
- The global economy is currently experiencing a new wave of technological change involving new technologies, especially in the realm of artificial intelligence and robotics, but not limited to it. One key concern in this context is the consequences of these new technologies on the labour market. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the direct and indirect effects of the rise of industrial robots and productivity via international value chains on various industrial indicators, including employment and real value added. The paper thereby adds to the existing empirical work on the relationship between technological change, employment and industrial growth by adding data on industrial robots while controlling for other technological advancements measured by total factor productivity (TFP). The results indicate that the overall impact of the installation of new robots did not statistically affect the growth of industrial employment during the period 2000–2014 significantly, while the overall impact on the real value added growth of industries in the world was positive and significant. The methodology also allows for a differentiation between the impact of robots across various industries and countries based on two different perspectives of source and destination industries across global value chains.
- Topic:
- Economics, Science and Technology, Digital Economy, Economic growth, Industry, and Robotics
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
3. Does Employment Protection Affect Unemployment? A Meta-analysis
- Author:
- Philipp Heimberger
- Publication Date:
- 02-2020
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
- Abstract:
- Despite extensive research efforts, the magnitude of the effect of employment protection legislation (EPL) on unemployment remains unclear. Existing econometric estimates exhibit substantial variation, and it is therefore difficult to draw valid conclusions. This paper applies meta-analysis and meta-regression methods to a unique data set consisting of 881 observations on the effect of EPL on unemployment from 75 studies. Once we control for publication selection bias, we cannot reject the hypothesis that the average effect of EPL on unemployment is zero. The meta-regression analysis, which investigates sources of heterogeneity in the reported effect sizes, reveals the following main results. First, the choice of the EPL variable matters: estimates that build on survey-based EPL variables report a significantly stronger unemployment-increasing impact of EPL than estimates developed using EPL indices based on the OECD’s methodology, where the latter relies on coding information from legal provisions. Second, we find that employment protection has a small unemployment-increasing effect on female unemployment, compared with a zero impact on total unemployment. Third, using multi-year averages of the underlying data tends to dampen the unemployment effects of EPL. Fourth, product market regulation is found to moderate the effect of EPL on unemployment.
- Topic:
- Labor Issues, European Union, Employment, Unemployment, and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
- Political Geography:
- Europe and Global Focus
4. Public and Private Pension Systems and Macroeconomic Volatility in OECD Countries
- Author:
- Mario Holzner, Stefan Jestl, and David Pichler
- Publication Date:
- 12-2019
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
- Abstract:
- This paper analyses the impact of public pension expenditures and pension funds’ assets as well as their benefits on economic volatility. To do so, we use panel data for 35 OECD countries for the period 1980-2018 and apply a set of state-of-the-art econometric estimators. Our results show weak evidence of a negative impact of public pension expenditures as well as weak evidence of a positive impact of pension funds’ benefits on volatility. Results were, however, found not to be very robust. In contrast, pension funds’ assets do not show any evidence of being associated with economic volatility. Unsystematic fiscal policy, banking crises and political (in)stability, however, are revealed to be somewhat more robust determinants of economic volatility.
- Topic:
- Economics, Public Sector, Econometrics, and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus