The Economics of Work and Technology

Why has automation anxiety – the fear that new technologies cause mass unemployment – proven wrong over the centuries? This lecture explores how technology affects the labour market. While new technologies can substitute for workers, reducing demand for their efforts at certain activities, they can also complement them, increasing demand for them to do activities that haven’t been automated. Historically, people have focused on the former, harmful force and underestimated – or ignored – the latter helpful force. Today, headlines all too often make the same mistake.