This paper, relying on a still relatively unexplored long-term dataset on U.S. patenting activity, provides empirical evidence on the history of labour-saving innovations back to early 19th century. The identification of mechanisation/automation heuristics, retrieved via textual content analysis...

This paper, relying on a still relatively unexplored long-term dataset on U.S.~patenting activity, provides empirical evidence on the history of labour-saving innovations back to early 19th century. The identification of mechanisation/automation heuristics, retrieved via textual content analysis...

This paper investigates the presence of explicit labour-saving heuristics within robotic patents. It analyses innovative actors engaged in robotic technology and their economic environment (identity, location, industry), and identifies the technological fields particularly exposed to...

We explore the extent to which the current technological trend, dubbed Industry 4.0, might increase forms of control inside organisations, by focussing on pivotal firms in the so-called Italian Motor Valley currently embracing its adoption. We find that Industry 4.0 technologies open up great...

This chapter presents an application of the multi-sector labour augmented K+S agent-based model to two contemporary challenges in political economy, namely declining unionization and rising inequality, with reference to mid-term evidence in the US. What has been the effect of declining...

The aim of this paper is to shed light on the paths, directions, and ensuing degrees of technological adoption fostered by trade unions or, alternatively, forms of resistance thereof, in the so called 'Italian Motor-Valley', a distinctive technological district located in the outskirts of...

This work assesses the double harm of Global Value Chain (GVC) integration. Firstly, we take a within-country structural change perspective and investigate how the internal structure of country production, and thus the ensuing emission profile, evolves across development phases. Assessing the...

Focusing on labour requirements incorporated into GVCs, in the following, we develop a novel, non conventional measure of learning capabilities, represented by knowledge embodied along the division of labour within global production networks. In order to capture the division of labour, and the...