
Technological change and automation are disrupting labor markets in advanced democracies and rekindling fears about technological unemployment and how the future of work will be. While there is little doubt that rapid technological progress has far-reaching economic effects, its political consequences remain largely unexplored. The goal of our research project is to study how technological change in the workplace contributes to ongoing deep political transformations (including the surge of populist movements), the adoption of policies to address change, and the political consequences of such policies.
The project is organized in four complementary work packages (WP). WP1 examines how workers’ individual economic trajectories and political behavior change when their industries digitalize. WP2 studies how the introduction of technology affects local-level political and electoral outcomes using rich
administrative data. WP3 assesses how technological vulnerability affects citizen preferences for a wide
range of policies to respond to technological change. WP4 analyses the successes, failures, and political consequences of existing social policies to reduce individual and regional disparities due to technological change.