Technology, Jobs, and Development Working Group
Conveners:
Members:
Margaret McMillan (Tufts University), Hanan Morsy (AFDB), Albert Park (ADB), Sergio Pinheiro Firpo (INSP), Simone Schotte (WIDER), Eric Verhoogen (Columbia University), and Fabrizio Zilibotti (Yale)
New technologies are having significant impact on economies around the world. These technologies include robots, computerized algorithms in industrial and service applications, Cloud services, the internet of things, big data analytics and immersive communications and artificial intelligence. One simple indicator: There are currently 2.7million robots in operation globally. The so-called 4th Industrial Revolution is likely to fundamentally alter labor markets around the world. It also poses significant concerns for poverty and inequality outcomes in developing and developed countries.
In many ways, the welfare impact of these new technologies will be transmitted through domestic labor markets – driven by how technology adoption rates shapes employment and wage outcomes in developing country labor markets. The impact could be understood as being determined by four key factors:
1 – Skills-Biased Technical Change (SBTC): This is a refence to the Tinbergen notion of the race between technology and educational attainment, where often the former tends to win in emerging markets. This process of SBTC thus leads to an excess demand for these scarce skills, and serves to drive wage inequality within economies.
2 – Patterns of Structural Transformation: The sectoral output- and export-shift in developing countries from economies dependent on agriculture to a heterogenous mixture of services (across the productivity spectrum) and manufacturing has resulted in labor demand outcomes which again can be inequality inducing.
3 – Changing Task Content of Jobs: This is the newest strand in the economics literature and focuses on how technology substitutes routine tasks (e.g. picking, sorting) within a workplace and undermines wage and employment growth for such jobs. These jobs are often located in the middle of occupational distribution.
4 – Policy Responses To Technology: Governments and also labor market institutions such as unions – faced with potential and actual job losses and rising wage inequality from technology – have embarked on a series of policy responses such as minimum wages and other forms of protection to mitigate the inequality-inducing effects of such technology shifts. Governments in the advanced economies can also re-orient the direction of innovation towards more labor-friendly technologies, which would have significant benefits for poor countries with an abundance of low-educated labor.
Our working group aims to study these issues and hold a series of global conversations around them.
Panel: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Appropriate Technology.
Most global innovation is concentrated in a handful of high-income countries. There are potentially large benefits from the diffusion and adoption of these new technologies around the world. However, a historic body of work arguing that imported technologies may be “inappropriate” suggests that the story may not be so simple. If new technologies are designed to match the conditions and characteristics of the countries that develop them, they could be substantially less useful in other parts of the world. Large populations could be left without technologies that work well for them. Most discussions of the appropriateness of technology have focused on the fact that technology is designed for the skill and capital-intensive environments of rich countries, making them less productive where skill and capital are scarce.
This panel broadens the story by taking a multidisciplinary perspective and exploring varied contexts in which technology may be inappropriate and thereby sustain global disparities. Each talk will focus on a different topic: Mireille Kamariza on healthcare and medical devices, Anton Korinek on artificial intelligence and data, Jacob Moscona on agriculture and biotechnology, and Nathan Nunn on culture. The goal of the panel is to expand the conversation on the (in)appropriateness of technology and understand how it may contribute to various forms of inequality around the world today.
Organizers:
Jacob Moscona, Harvard University
Dani Rodrik, Harvard University
Chair:
Dani Rodrik, Harvard University
Panelists:
Mireille Kamariza, Harvard University
Anton Korinek, University of Virginia
Jacob Moscona, Harvard University
Nathan Nunn, UBC
January 31, 2023
5:00 pm ET
Panel: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Appropriate Technology
January 31, 2023 5:00-6:30 pm ET
Moderated by:
Dani Rodrik, Harvard University
Panelists:
Mireille Kamariza, Harvard University
Anton Korinek, University of Virginia
Jacob Moscona, Harvard University
Nathan Nunn, UBC
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Appropriate Technology: Policy Options and Pitfalls
Moderated by:
Eric Verhoogen, Columbia
Speakers:
Ed Brown, African Center for Economic Transformation
Xiaolan Fu, University of Oxford
Juan Carlos Hallak, Universidad de Buenos Aires
Margaret McMillan, Tufts University
Should ‘Appropriate Technology’ Be Revived?
Moderated by:
Dani Rodrik, Harvard University
Introductory remarks by:
Frances Stewart, University of Oxford
Speakers:
Daron Acemoglu, MIT
Eric Verhoogen, Columbia University
Fabrizio Zilibotti, Yale
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Workshop on Digital Technologies – Limits and Opportunities for Economic Development
Opening and Host:
Dani Rodrik, Harvard University and IEA
Speakers:
Daron Acemoglu, MIT
Mahdi Ghodsi et al, Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies
Kunal Sen, UNU-WIDER
Albert Park, Center for Economic Policy, HKUST
Discussant:
Simone Schotte, UNU-WIDER
Moderator:
Haroon Bhorat, University of Cape Town