Talk to focus on ‘Political Economy of Industrial Automation’

05 JANUARY, 2023: Jaideep Roy, from University of Bath, will speak at a research seminar titled ‘Political Economy of Industrial Automation’ at 4.00 pm on 13 January 2023. The seminar will be held at P21.

The seminar will focus on an economy where aggregate automation, which displaces particular sections of the labour force based on their industry-specific skills, is determined through competitive politics. In addition to wages, workers receive fixed benefits based on their employment status. Labour institutions characterise the relative bias of these benefits across the employed and the displaced. We evaluate two types of politics across two types of economies vis a vis equilibrium automation, displacement and welfare.  When it comes to politics, we compare office-seeking versus ideological motivations, where parties are either pro-worker or pro-capitalist.

For economies, we distinguish between high- and low-skilled labour force. When institutional bias towards the displaced is moderate to high, regardless of politics and the skill profile of the economy, automation displaces largely the middle sections of the skill spectrum, while both ends are relatively protected. The high-skilled workers are most vulnerable to automation when the economy is low-skilled and labour institutions either favour the employed or are mildly biased toward the displaced. This vulnerability is maximum under office-seeking politics.

On the other hand, under the same labour institutions, they are best protected if the economy is high-skilled. In contrast, the lowest skilled workers are most vulnerable to automation under both politics when the economy is high-skilled and labour institutions either favour the employed or are mildly biased toward the displaced. On the other hand, under the same labour institutions, they are best protected if the economy is low-skilled and politics is office-seeking.

The speaker profile can be found at: https://jaideeproy.weebly.com/