Technical change, EMPloyment & Inequality. A Spatial analysis of households & plant data

根据伦敦期货德勤（London Futures Deloitte）的报告（Frey and Osborne, 2014），由于引入数字机器人取代他们的工作，未来20年，英国35%的现有劳动力面临被裁员的风险。对于那些设法保住工作的人来说，很难预测他们是否以及如何能够使自己的技能适应不断变化的职业任务需求。一个正在出现的趋势是，在引入新的数字资本之后，企业解雇了大量中等技能工人，同时寻找低技能工人来执行高度常规的任务，或者寻找提供创造性想法并应用复杂知识的高技能人员，以最大限度地发挥数字资本的效益。对任务需求的两极分化以及完成任务所需技能的两极分化，很可能反映在类似的工资两极分化上。这将取决于企业如何决定提高数字机械化，例如，他们购买哪种类型的硬件和软件服务，以及这种新资本需要哪种类型的新职业。此外，正如皮凯蒂（2014）指出的那样，资本在生产中所占份额的上升与劳动力所占份额的下降密切相关，有利于最高收入的集中。总的来说，创新公司可能要为收入不平等的加剧负责，因为资本回报更集中在少数有创造力的首席执行官手中，而工资账单的比例更高，而高技能工人的比例却更低。本研究旨在通过考察技术变革对收入不平等影响背后的核心机制，为其提供比较证据，方法是直接参与其发生的行为者：投资于有形资本、数字资本和研发的企业，分别提供从事非常规和常规任务的熟练和非熟练劳动力的家庭，以及相关的工资和非工资收入分配。与现有文献相比，本研究的新颖贡献在于以下几个方面。首先，我们将在空间层面上独特地结合特定区域（定义为TTWA）内企业的有形、数字和研发投资的工厂层面数据，以及同一TTWA内家庭的职业类别、工资和非工资收入数据。英国国家统计局（Office for National Statistics）将ttwa定义为自给自足的本地劳动力市场。其次，我们将研究技术变革如何通过创造性破坏，在TTWA水平上改变最高收入份额、工资分配和资本收入分配。第三，我们将分析企业有形资本、数字资本和研发投资的水平和构成之间的时空关联，以及(i)个人职业选择在不同工作类别中的变化，以及（ii）工资分布中不同分位数的工资变化。这项研究增加了一场关于紧迫的社会和政策问题的辩论：收入不平等和失业。因此，它不仅对学术界，而且对决策者、创新雇主、公共、社会和私营企业、工会、培训机构以及寻求和使用就业和投资决策信息的劳动力中的青年和老年成员都特别重要。我们的传播计划确保我们的研究结果到达所有上述利益相关者，以告知他们的决策过程。

According to the London Futures Deloitte report (Frey and Osborne, 2014), 35 per cent of the current workforce in the UK is at risk of being made redundant over the next two decades as a result of the introduction of digital robots that will replace their tasks. For those that manage to remain employed, it is difficult to predict whether and how they are able to adapt their skills to the changing demand for occupational tasks. One emerging trend is that, after the introduction of new digital capital, firms dismiss large shares of medium-skilled workers, while seeking either low skilled workers to perform highly routinised tasks, or very high skilled people who provide creative ideas and apply sophisticated knowledge to maximise the benefits of digital capital. The polarisation of demand for tasks and the skills required to perform them is likely to be reflected in a similar polarisation of wages. This will depend on how firms decide to increase digital mechanisation, for instance what type of hardware and software services they purchase, and what types of new occupations this new capital requires. Also, as pointed out by Piketty (2014), rising share of capital in production goes hand in hand with decreasing share of labour, favouring top income concentration. Overall, innovative firms might be responsible for increasing income inequality, both through higher concentration of capital returns in the hands of a few creative CEOs and a higher proportion of the wage bill going to a proportionally smaller share of very high-skilled workers.This research aims to provide comparative evidence on the core mechanisms behind the effects of technical change on income inequality, by looking at the actors directly involved in their occurrence: firms investing in tangible, digital capital and R&D, and households providing skilled and unskilled workforce respectively employed in un-routinised and routinised tasks, and the associated distribution of wage and non-wage income. The novel contribution of this research compared to the extant literature is in the following aspects. First, we will uniquely combine, at the spatial level, plant-level data on tangible, digital and R&D investments of firms located in a certain area, defined as Travel-To-Work-Area (TTWA) and data on occupational categories, wage and non-wage earnings of household living in the same TTWA. TTWAs are defined by the Office for National Statistics as self-contained local labour markets. Second, we will study how technical change, through creative destruction, changes top income shares, wage distribution, and capital income distribution, at the level of TTWA. Third, we will analyse the temporal and spatial associations between the level and composition of investments in tangible, digital capital and R&D in firms and (i) changes in individual's occupational choice across job categories, and (ii) changes in wages at different quantiles of the wage distribution.This research adds to a debate on pressing social and policy issues: income inequality and unemployment. It is therefore particularly relevant not only for the academic community, but also for policy makers, innovative employers, public, social and private enterprises, trade unions, training institutions and young and old members of the workforce that seek and use information on employment and investment decisions. Our dissemination plan ensures that the findings of our research reach all the above stakeholders to inform their decision-making processes.