Documents United Nations University. Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology 6 results

"This paper studies the direct and indirect channels through which offshoring affects the domestic skillwage structure and employment opportunities. To identify these channels, we develop a task-based model with unemployment that accounts for skill heterogeneity and endogenous allocation of domestic tasks to skill groups and abroad. A decline in offshoring costs of medium skill-intensive tasks induces i) a specialization effect towards low and high skill-intensive tasks, explaining one source of wage polarization, ii) an internal skill-task reallocation effect, and iii) a productivity effect due to production cost reductions. The key determinants of these channels are the elasticity of substitution between domestic and offshore tasks and the elasticity of task productivity schedules between domestic skill groups and between domestic and offshore workers across tasks."

"In the European labour market there is a clear scope for improvement in activity rates. Moreover, sustainable employment is impeded by the pervasiveness of temporary work, self-employment and part-time work. As a consequence there is a clear role for active inclusion policies, complemented by stimulating macroeconomic policies. However, the implementation of appropriate policies, initiated in 2008, never really took off and stagnated due to the austerity measures enforced after the financial crisis. For that reason we propose to experiment with Job Guarantee (JG) projects. On the one hand, JG projects should provide a macroeconomic stimulus to the economy by employing everybody who is out of work in JG jobs at the minimum wage. On the other hand, JG projects could stop the downward trend in job quality and foster inclusive labour markets by providing quality jobs and sustainable employment. We propose to finance the JG Scheme by redirecting social security (administration) funds, by including JG elements in the European Investment Plan (also known as the Juncker Plan) and to spend part of the € 60 billion which the ECB is injecting each month in the Euro Area on job guarantee projects."

"The aim of this paper is to analyse the environmental performances of manufacturing sectors and their main drivers, (economic factors, technology, trade). We analyse the dynamic development of environmental performances, in absolute terms and in 'productivity' terms, through both decomposition and econometric analyses. The analysis aims to highlight differences over time, across geographical areas, by country income categories and by sector technological classes. Strong emphasis is assigned to the comparison of consumption and production perspectives."

"The European economy is currently in a slump, the worst since the 1930s. Although this is often seen as a consequence of the financial crisis that hit the capitalist world in 2007-8, we argue that many of the problems that Europe faces today have long-term roots to do with the fact that Europe consists of countries with quite different dynamics and capacities for adapting to changes in the global and European economic environment. We start by comparing Europes growth performance to that of other parts of the world, and then consider some popular but arguably erroneous explanations of the present crisis. Subsequently, we delve into the development of the external balances of various European countries. This leads to the identification of three European archetypes, characterized by different adaptability and performance, i.e., the North, the South and the East. We explore the consequences of globalization and European economic integration for the economic performance of these different country groups. The effects have been quite asymmetric; the Southern countries in particular have benefited little if at all. Finally, we summarize the lessons from the analysis and consider the implications for policy. What is needed is a European growth policy, properly adapted to the different capacities across Europe, that places the welfare of the European population as a whole at the centre."

"Recent studies report that technological developments in machine learning and artificial intelligence present a significant risk to jobs in advanced countries. We re-estimate automation risk at the job level, finding sectoral employment structure to be key in determining automation risk at the country level. At the country level, we find a negative relationship between automation risk and labour productivity. We then analyse the role of trade as a factor leading to structural changes and consider the effect of trade on aggregate automation risk by comparing automation risk between a hypothetical autarky and the actual situation. Results indicate that trade increases automation risk in Europe, although moderately so. European countries with high labour productivity see automation risk increase due to trade, with trade between European and non-European nations driving these results. This implies that the high productivity countries do not, on the balance, offshore automation risk, but rather import it."