Documents Acemoglu, Daron 17 results

"A thousand years of history and contemporary evidence make one thing clear. Progress is not automatic but depends on the choices we make about technology. New ways of organizing production and communication can either serve the narrow interests of an elite or become the foundation for widespread prosperity.
Much of the wealth generated by agricultural advances during the European Middle Ages was captured by the Church and used to build grand cathedrals while the peasants starved. The first hundred years of industrialization in England delivered stagnant incomes for workers, while making a few people very rich. And throughout the world today, digital technologies and artificial intelligence increase inequality and undermine democracy through excessive automation, massive data collection, and intrusive surveillance.
It doesn't have to be this way. Power and Progress demonstrates that the path of technology was once - and can again be - brought under control. The tremendous computing advances of the last half century can become empowering and democratizing tools, but not if all major decisions remain in the hands of a few hubristic tech leaders striving to build a society that elevates their own power and prestige.
With their breakthrough economic theory and manifesto for a better society, Acemoglu and Johnson provide the understanding and the vision to reshape how we innovate and who really gains from technological advances so we can create real prosperity for all."

"We study the effects of industrial robots on US labor markets. We show theoretically that robots may reduce employment and wages and that their local impacts can be estimated using variation in exposure to robots—defined from industry-level advances in robotics and local industry employment. We estimate robust negative effects of robots on employment and wages across commuting zones. We also show that areas most exposed to robots after 1990 do not exhibit any differential trends before then, and robots' impact is distinct from other capital and technologies. One more robot per thousand workers reduces the employment-to-population ratio by 0.2 percentage points and wages by 0.42%."

"To combat climate change without sacrificing long-term economic growth, innovation must be redirected toward green technologies. The authors review recent literature that has developed a directed technical change framework where innovation can be endogenously targeted either toward fossil-fuel enhancing technologies or clean energy sources (such as renewables). They provide empirical evidence of path dependence in firms' choice between green and dirty innovation. They then draw implications of this path dependence for the design of environmental policy and for economic growth. In particular, they show that their framework has distinctive implications regarding unilateral environmental policies, international cooperation, the use of intermediate energy sources such as natural gas, and the role of civil society."

"As robots and other computer-assisted technologies take over tasks previously performed by labor, there is increasing concern about the future of jobs and wages. We analyze the effect of the increase in industrial robot usage between 1990 and 2007 on US local labor markets. Using a model in which robots compete against human labor in the production of different tasks, we show that robots may reduce employment and wages, and that the local labor market effects of robots can be estimated by regressing the change in employment and wages on the exposure to robots in each local labor market—defined from the national penetration of robots into each industry and the local distribution of employment across industries. Using this approach, we estimate large and robust negative effects of robots on employment and wages across commuting zones. We bolster this evidence by showing that the commuting zones most exposed to robots in the post-1990 era do not exhibit any differential trends before 1990. The impact of robots is distinct from the impact of imports from China and Mexico, the decline of routine jobs, offshoring, other types of IT capital, and the total capital stock (in fact, exposure to robots is only weakly correlated with these other variables). According to our estimates, one more robot per thousand workers reduces the employment to population ratio by about 0.18-0.34 percentage points and wages by 0.25-0.5 percent."

"A key question in the economics of climate change is the importance of global policy coordination in reducing carbon emissions. In this paper, we study this question using a two-country (North–South) extension of Acemoglu et al. (2012) which introduces directed technical change into a general equilibrium model of climate change. We find that, first, the optimal policy necessarily requires global policy coordination, with the implementation of research subsidies and carbon taxes in both North and South. Second, under certain circumstances, appropriately chosen environmental regulations in the North alone can prevent the worst environmental disasters. In particular, such disasters can be prevented by a combination of carbon taxes and clean research subsidies under the restrictive conditions that (a) the two inputs are substitutable in both countries; (b) there is no international trade between the North and the South; and (c) the South imitates technologies invented in the North. Third, international trade between the North and the South typically makes it more difficult to prevent environmental disasters through unilateral policies in the North, because environmental regulation in the North may induce full specialization by the South in dirty input production, as imitation of clean technologies by the South then ceases to be profitable. Hence, given current circumstances, global policy coordination is highly desirable."

"This is a provocative new theory of political economy explaining why the world is divided into nations with wildly differing levels of prosperity. Why are some nations more prosperous than others? "Why Nations Fail" sets out to answer this question, with a compelling and elegantly argued new theory: that it is not down to climate, geography or culture, but because of institutions. Drawing on an extraordinary range of contemporary and historical examples, from ancient Rome through the Tudors to modern-day China, leading academics Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson show that to invest and prosper, people need to know that if they work hard, they can make money and actually keep it - and this means sound institutions that allow virtuous circles of innovation, expansion and peace. Based on fifteen years of research, and answering the competing arguments of authors ranging from Max Weber to Jeffrey Sachs and Jared Diamond, Acemoglu and Robinson step boldly into the territory of Francis Fukuyama and Ian Morris. They blend economics, politics, history and current affairs to provide a new, powerful and persuasive way of understanding wealth and poverty. They offer a pragmatic basis for the hope that at 'critical junctures' in history, those mired in poverty can be placed on the path to prosperity - with important consequences for our views on everything from the role of aid to the future of China."

"Because of their more limited inequality and more comprehensive social welfare systems, many perceive average welfare to be higher in Scandinavian societies than in the United States. Why then does the United States not adopt Scandinavian-style institutions? More generally, in an interdependent world, would we expect all countries to adopt the same institutions? To provide theoretical answers to this question, we develop a simple model of economic growth in a world in which all countries benefit and potentially contribute to advances in the world technology frontier. A greater gap of incomes between successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurs (thus greater
inequality) increases entrepreneurial effort and hence a country's
contribution to the world technology frontier. We show that, under
plausible assumptions, the world equilibrium is asymmetric: some countries will opt for a type of "cutthroat capitalism" that generates greater inequality and more innovation and will become the technology leaders, while others will free- ride on the cutthroat incentives of the leaders and choose a more “cuddly” form of capitalism. Paradoxically, those with cuddly reward structures, though poorer, may have higher welfare than cutthroat capitalists; but in the world equilibrium, it is not a best response for the cutthroat capitalists to switch to a more cuddly form of capitalism.
We also show that domestic constraints from social democratic parties or unions may be beneficial for a country because they prevent cutthroat capitalism domestically, instead inducing other countries to play this role."

"Mondialisation et dynamique des inégalitésRisquesPierre-Noël GiraudLa question de savoir si la mondialisation est un facteur qui aggrave les inégalités économiques, tant entre les pays qu'à l'intérieur de chacun d'entre eux, mobilise de plus en plus les chercheurs. Le résultat qui ressort de la plupart des analyses sur séries longues est que l'évolution des inégalités – après une réduction ou stabilisation durant plusieurs décennies – est repartie à la hausse dans les décennies quatre-vingt et quatre-vingt-dix. Le rôle de la mondialisation est ambigu. Elle peut être un facteur favorable au rattrapage pour les pays pauvres – à condition de disposer de certains atouts comme un Etat fort et légitime. L'évolution des inégalités est également contrastée au sein des pays industrialisés. Quant au rôle de l'Etat, l'auteur souligne que si la mondialisation engendre des tendances inégalitaires internes, il ne faut pas oublier que les gouvernements disposent toujours de moyens pour les atténuer.Le double lien entre inégalités et croissanceConférence AfD-EUDN du 13 novembre 2003 à ParisOrazio Attanasio et Chiara BinelliL'analyse du lien entre les inégalités économiques et la croissance est depuis longtemps un sujet très controversé. Ce débat tient à la diversité des arguments et au caractère peu concluant des résultats empiriques. Sur le plan théorique, la relation entre les inégalités et la croissance est double. Elle peut être positive par le biais de l'épargne individuelle et des incitations à investir. Mais elle est susceptible également s'être négative. Les inégalités peuvent en effet être la cause d'une instabilité politique et sociale, d'une charge fiscale décourageante pour l'investissement ou d'un taux d'accumulation plus faible de capital humain. Les études empiriques – elles se heurtent à des problèmes méthodologiques et de qualité des données - sont aussi variées que les arguments théoriques. Néanmoins, les analyses les plus récentes confortent plutôt l'hypothèse d'un impact négatif des inégalités de revenus sur la croissance.L'influence de la technologie sur l'évolution des inégalitésNBER reporterDaron AcemogluL'idée selon laquelle le progrès technologique est un facteur déterminant de l'évolution des inégalités économiques est aujourd'hui largement répandue. En effet, le progrès technique favorise l'emploi de personnes plus qualifiées et augmente la demande de formation. La distribution des salaires serait ainsi biaisée en faveur des personnes plus formées. Néanmoins, le mécanisme de substitution ne joue pas toujours en faveur de l'emploi qualifié, comme l'a montré le XIXe siècle avec le développement des usines et des chaînes de montage. La révolution technologique qui se propage depuis les années soixante-dix est cependant d'une autre nature : il s'agit en fait d'un changement technologique endogène.Quel est l'apport des indicateurs composites des inégalités et de développement ?Premières journées du développement du GRESBruno BoidinLa question de la mesure est un sujet central dans l'étude des inégalités. L'éventail des indicateurs est grand, mais il se réduit si on se cantonne à une comparaison internationale. Dans ce contexte, le plus connu est certainement l'indicateur du développement humain (IDH) du Programme des Nations Unies pour le développement (PNUD). Mais comme tous les autres indicateurs, il est contesté. Afin de clarifier le débat, l'auteur propose des critères d'évaluation. Ils portent sur le bien-être, la comparabilité dans l'espace et dans le temps ainsi que sur l'utilisation de l'indicateur comme outil d'aide aux décideurs publics. L'auteur conclut qu'à l'avenir, on pourrait songer à combiner des indicateurs synthétiques du bien-être à des mesures plus sectoriels.La difficile mesure de la pauvreté en FranceConseil de l'emploi, des revenus et de la cohésion socialeLa lutte contre la pauvreté est devenue une des priorités des politiques économiques et sociales. L'analyse des causes de la pauvreté et de son évolution nécessite le recours à des informations dont la qualité ne paraît pas encore satisfaisante, comme l'atteste par exemple la disponibilité encore trop tardive des données synthétiques en France. Les auteurs proposent la mise en place de deux indicateurs de pauvreté, l'un tenant compte de l'évolution des seuls revenus des ménages pauvres, l'autre - plus classique - situant les revenus dans le cadre de la progression générale des revenus des ménages."