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The impacts of adopting new technology: firm- and worker-level evidence

15 July 2024

Advancing technologies are increasingly able to automate tasks and even jobs. This raises concerns that new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics will displace workers and lead to increasing inequality. In this project, we exploit a survey on the use of new technologies by firms over the last three decades. This rarely used dataset includes questions on the use of various new technologies by firms, including robotics, AI and ICT. We link this survey to administrative data on workers and firms in the Netherlands. We first examine which firms adopt which types of technologies. In the second part of the project, we examine the impact of the adoption of new technology on the workforce composition of the firm and workers’ employment prospects and wage dynamics. We are particularly interested in which technologies are complementary to which workers, and can hence create new employment opportunities for the future.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash