In this paper we study job design. Will an organization plan precisely how the job is to be done ex ante, or ask workers to determine the process as they go? We first model this decision and predict complementarity between these job attributes: multitasking, discretion, skills, and...

We document firm-level changes following mergers and acquisitions (M&As) which mirror aggregate shifts in the US labor market observed in response to greater use of automation. Specifically, we show post M&A establishments become less routine task intensive, more high-skilled, and pay more...

Human workers and machines often compete against each other for jobs. In light of the growing unretirement (i.e., post-retirement employment), we explore the linkages between the individuals’ skill-specific automatability and their unretirement decisions. The skill-specific automatability is...

In this chapter, we analyze immigration and its effect on urban and regional economies focusing on productivity and labor markets. While immigration policies are typically national, the effects of international migrants are often more easily identified on local economies. The reason is that...

In manufacturing, technology has sharply reduced jobs in recent decades. But before that, for over a century, employment grew, even in industries experiencing rapid technological change. What changed? Demand was highly elastic at first and then became inelastic. The effect of artificial...

In this paper we study job design. Will an organization plan precisely how the job is to be done ex ante, or ask workers to determine the process as they go? We first model this decision and predict complementarity between these job attributes: multitasking, discretion, skills, and...

Mechanization (or automation) - the replacement by machines of humans (and animals) engaged in production tasks- has proceeded continuously since the Industrial Revolution and seems to have accelerated recently due to the rapid advancement of information technology. This paper examines...

This paper studies how changes in the complexity of the firms' production technologies affect wage differences between and within tasks. In a production process where tasks are complementary, the employer may have an incentive to pay higher wages when using more complex technologies because the...