Speaker: Andrea Fracasso (Università di Trento)
Abstract
The presentation focuses on the effects of investment in new digital technologies (specifically robotics, big data, Internet of Things, virtual reality, and cybersecurity) on firm employment, firms' training and firms’ hiring strategies using a comprehensive and representative survey conducted in Italy in 2015 and 2018. The empirical strategy allows us to identify the causal effects of the investments in the new technologies by combining the predetermined composition of employment at the firm level with the exogenous technological progress in digital technologies occurring at the global level. The main results from the empirical analysis tell different stories about the impact of investment in robotics and in information digital technologies. Robotics investment does not significantly affect employment levels, but influences the composition of contracts. Investment in information digital technologies, on the other hand, has a positive effect on firms' overall employment and on their propensity to hire skilled workers in the future. These results show the coexistence of displacement and reinstatement effects at the firm level. Investment in information digital technologies is also conducive to specific training programmes, in line with the characteristics of this type of investment.