Automation and Employment over the Technology Life Cycle: Evidence from European Regions

In the final stages of the life cycle, the technology is mature and is more standardized, and firms have learned to integrate it efficiently into the production process and to perform many of the tasks previously carried out by workers.2 In the second scenario, early adopters (which tend to be the most productive and technologically advanced firms, most capable of rapidly integrating new technolog. [...] In the case of industrial robots, we identified enhancements in flexibility, control, and sensing capabilities with the third generation of robots (1990–on), and the introduction of the fourth generation of intelligent robots which built on the developments in AI (2010–on). [...] While data on the adoption of specific technologies across countries are unavailable, these trends and the discussions in Sections 3.1 and 3.2, imply the presence of distinct phases in the evolution and use of ICT and robots with potentially varying impacts on the labor market. [...] Negative effects in the second phase of the first (Web 1.0) and second (GUI and cloud computing) technology life cycles generally outweigh the positive effects observed in the first phase of each of the two cycles. [...] In practice, this means that although increased demand, spillovers, and emergence of new tasks may compensate for the substitution effect of ICT in the longer term, workers do experience reduced demand in the short run, and particularly in the second phases of the technology life cycles when the technology is more mature.