Authors: Alessio Garau, Alessio Moro, Marco Nieddu
Status: Work in progress - Draft coming soon!!
Abstract: A central question in economics is whether technological innovations complement or substitute workers’ skills, thus enhancing or replacing workers’ productivity. However, occupational output is often hard to measure, especially for high-skilled workers performing abstract tasks, making it hard to answer this question. In this paper, we focus on the effect of technology on productivity and inequality within a specific high-skilled group, that of researchers in economics, for whom we collect the universe of research output (i.e. published papers) for the period 1990-2022. We use as case study the introduction of DYNARE, a software designed to easily solve and simulate dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models.
We develop an heteroegenous agents dynamic model of research and citations accumulation, in which the arrival of the technology allows some researchers to perform more easily a subset of the tasks needed to write academic papers. Next, we test the model’s implications by leveraging quasi-experimental variation in DYNARE adoption across economic fields. We find that treated fields experience a statistically significant differential increase in the yearly number of publications with respect to untreated ones. Consistent with the predictions of the model, the increase in publication is driven by less productive scholars at the time of technology arrival, thus suggesting that the new technology led to a decrease in citation inequality.
Authors: Silvia Balia, Alessio Garau, Daniela Sonedda, Giovanni Sulis
Status: Work in progress
Abstract: This paper examines the impact of mandatory sectoral closures on labor mobility in Italy during COVID-19, using detailed administrative data on employment activations, separations, and contract transformations. We analyze employment flows between essential and non-essential sectors, applying propensity score matching and a weighted difference-in-difference approach. The results reveal significant effects for sectors that were forced to shut down, particularly in increased transitions from employment to unemployment and decreased transitions from unemployment to employment.