Articulos
Interview with Mercedes Maroto-Valer, Director of the UK Industrial Decarbonisation Research and Innovation Centre (IDRIC). What are the most urgent measures we need to take to curb climate change? There is no single option that will solve everything. We have to develop a range of solutions and whatever option we consider, the need for urgency must always […]
Interview with Sebastián Di Martino, Director of Conservation, Rewilding Argentina Foundation What is rewilding? What is its goal? ‘Rewilding’ is a term that was born in the 1990s, tied to the conservation of large carnivores in extensive spaces – a period in which the fundamental role that large spaces have on the survival of these […]
Interview with Karen Holl, Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Why are ecosystems and forests so important for climate and how can they help fight it? Forests and other ecosystems store a huge amount of carbon above and below ground. The most important thing we can be doing is to keep the […]
An interview with Rocio Jimenez, Postdoctoral Research Scientist, Department of Biology, Cádiz University Why are we talking about carbon neutrality, what is it and why are we raising this issue now? By the end of the last century we had lost half of the oceans’ wealth of life. What we now call blue natural capital, which underpins […]
Interview with Luis Díaz Fernández, President of the Spanish Technology Platform for CO2 (PTECO2) What are CCUS and what role do they play in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals? The acronym CCUS (which stands for carbon capture, use, and storage) is an umbrella term for different technologies capable of capturing, transporting, storing geologically, and using carbon […]
Interview with Carlos Abanades, Research Professor at the CSIC, National Coal Institute. What would happen on a planet where humans kept burning fossil fuels without taking any action to stop it? According to the experts in charge of building climate scenarios, the IPCC and United Nations reports and publications in the most prestigious scientific journals, we […]
Interview with Carlos M. Duarte Holder of the Tarek Ahmed Juffali Research Chair in Red Sea Ecology, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia; BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award and BBVA OpenMind author. 2021 has kicked off the UN’s Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. Why is it so important to […]
In this paper, we argue that the effects of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation on growth and employment depend to a large extent on institutions and policies. In the first part of the paper we survey the most recent literature to show that AI can spur growth by replacing labor by capital, both in the production of goods and services and in the production of ideas. However, AI may inhibit growth if combined with inappropriate competition policy. In the second part of the paper we discuss the effect of robotization on employment in France over the 1994–2014 period. Based on our empirical analysis on French data, we first show that robotization reduces aggregate employment at the employment zone level, and second that noneducated workers are more negatively affected by robotization than educated workers. This finding suggests that inappropriate labor market and education policies reduce the positive impact that AI and automation could have on employment.
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Technological change is making it harder to interpret disappointing productivity figures in many economies. Although there are likely to be many contributory factors, such as post-financial crisis debt overhang and demographic change, technological change complicates the interpretation of the evidence in two ways. One is the delay between companies adopting new technologies and their impact on productivity because of the organizational or management changes and the complementary investments that are also needed. The other is the mismatch between how official GDP and productivity figures are defined and the character of the digital economy, such as zero price, advertising-funded services, or the switch to cloud computing. A more fundamental question is whether “productivity” is a useful concept in economies consisting to such a large extent of services and intangibles.
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The digital revolution is transforming economies. Potential economic gains from digital technologies are enormous, but with new opportunities come new challenges. Within economies, income and wealth inequalities have risen as digitization has reshaped markets and the world of business and work. Inequalities have increased between firms and between workers. The distribution of both capital and labor income has become more unequal, and income has shifted from labor to capital. Technological change, however, is not the sole reason for the rising inequalities. Policy failures have been an important part of the story. Policies will need to be more responsive to the new dynamics of the digital economy to achieve outcomes that are more inclusive.
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