Documents Prettner, Klaus 11 results

We explore future job creation needs under conditions of demographic, economic, and technological change. First, we estimate the implications for job creation in 2020–2030 of population growth, changes in labor force participation, and the achievement of plausible target unemployment rates, disaggregated by age and gender. Second, we analyze the job creation needs differentiated by country income group. Finally, we examine how accelerated automation could affect job creation needs over the coming decades. Overall, shifting demographics, changing labor force participation rates, reductions in unemployment to the target levels of 8 percent for youth and 4 percent for adults, and automation combine to require the creation of approximately 340 million jobs in 2020–2030."

"This article explores future job creation needs under conditions of demographic, economic and technological change. The authors first estimate the implications for job creation during 2020–30 of population growth, changes in labour force participation and the achievement of target unemployment rates, by age and sex. Second, they analyse the job creation needs by country income group and, lastly, examine the effects of accelerated automation. Projections indicate that shifting demographics will account for a far greater share of the estimated global need for 340 million jobs over 2020–30 than automation."

"It is widely argued that declining fertility slows the pace of economic growth in industrialized countries through its negative effect on labor supply. There are, however, theoretical arguments suggesting that the effect of falling fertility on effective labor supply can be offset by associated behavioral changes. We formalize these arguments by setting forth a dynamic consumer optimization model that incorporates endogenous fertility as well as endogenous education and health investments. The model shows that a fertility decline induces higher education and health investments that are able to compensate for declining fertility under certain circumstances. We assess the theoretical implications by investigating panel data for 118 countries over the period 1980 to 2005 and show that behavioral changes partly mitigate the negative impact of declining fertility on effective labor supply."

"In summer 2007, the US subprime crisis emerged and economic growth in industrialised countries started to slow down. The situation deteriorated after the default of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 and despite massive government interventions, the United States and most European countries slid into recession. We investigate the influence of the recent economic and financial crisis on European labour market perspectives and educational attainment decisions. Furthermore we disentangle the differential impacts of the crisis on various demographic subgroups. We find that young male workers have been hit hardest, while older workers and women have been partially protected by non-redeemable contracts and the fact that they work in sectors which have been less severely hit by the crisis. Focusing on the education sector, it seems that the demand for education increases because individuals try to circumvent the tight labour market, while the supply of education suffers because of the increased pressures on federal budgets in most European countries. However, we conclude that it is too early to make a definite statement because the full impact of the crisis on the education sector is still to come."

"Globally, an estimated 734 million jobs will be required between 2010 and 2030 to accommodate recent and ongoing demographic shifts, account for plausible changes in labour force participation rates, and achieve target unemployment rates of at or below 4 percent for adults and at or below 8 percent for youth. The facts that i) most new jobs will be required in countries where “decent” jobs are less prevalent and ii) workers in many occupations are increasingly subject to risks of automation further compound the challenge of job creation, which is already quite sizable in historical perspective. Failure to create the jobs that are needed through 2030 would put currently operative social security systems under pressure and undermine efforts to guarantee the national social protection floors enshrined in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)."

"We propose a theoretical framework to analyze the offshoring and reshoring decisions of firms in the age of automation. Our theory suggests that increasing productivity in automation leads to a relocation of previously offshored production back to the home economy but without improving low-skilled wages and without creating jobs for low-skilled workers. Since it leads also to increasing wages for high-skilled workers, automation induced reshoring is associated with an increasing skill premium and increasing inequality. Using a new measure of reshoring activity and data from the world input outputtable, we find evidence for a positive association between reshoring and the degree of automation. On average, within manufacturing sectors, an increase by one robot per 1000 workers is associated with a 3.5% increase of reshoring activity. We also provide evidence that reshoring is positively associated with wages and employment for high-skilled labor but not for low-skilled labor."

"Globally, an estimated 734 million jobs will be required between 2010 and 2030 to accommodate recent and ongoing demographic shifts, account for plausible changes in labour force participation rates, and achieve target unemployment rates of at or below 4 per cent for adults and at or below 8 per cent for youth. The facts that most new jobs will be required in countries where “decent” jobs are less prevalent and workers in many occupations are increasingly subject to risks of automation further compound the challenge of job creation, which is already quite sizable in historical perspective. Failure to create the jobs that are needed through 2030 would put currently operative social security systems under pressure and undermine efforts to guarantee the national social protection floors enshrined in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)."

"Over the last decade there has been a tremendous progress in automation. Many tasks previously seen as un-automatable can now be performed without human labour, and the number of industrial robots in use has increased sharply. This column describes the recent trends in automation and argues that its principal effects are to increase output per capita at the expense of rising inequality. Advancing technologies have mainly replaced the routine tasks of low-skilled workers, while the incomes robots generate flow to wealthier capital owners. The current COVID-19 pandemic is likely to reinforce these trends, raising the need for a policy response."

"We discuss and review literature on the macroeconomic effects of epidemics and pandemics since the late 20th century. First, we cover the role of health in driving economic growth and well-being and discuss standard frameworks for assessing the economic burden of infectious diseases. Second, we sketch a general theoretical framework to evaluate the tradeoffs policymakers must consider when addressing infectious diseases and their macroeconomic repercussions. In so doing, we emphasize the dependence of economic consequences on (i) disease characteristics; (ii) inequalities among individuals in terms of susceptibility, preferences, and income; and (iii) cross-country heterogeneities in terms of their institutional and macroeconomic environments. Third, we study pharmaceutical and nonpharmaceutical policies aimed at mitigating and preventing infectious diseases and their macroeconomic repercussions. Fourth, we discuss the health toll and economic impacts of five infectious diseases: HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, influenza, and COVID-19. Although major epidemics and pandemics can take an enormous human toll and impose a staggering economic burden, early and targeted health and economic policy interventions can often mitigate both to a substantial degree."