The Remainder Effect: How Automation Complements Labor Quality

This paper argues that automation both complements and replaces workers. Extending the Acemoglu-Restrepo model of automation to consider labor quality, we obtain a Remainder Effect: while automation displaces labor on some tasks, it raises the returns to skill on remaining tasks across skill groups. This effect increases between-firm pay inequality while labor displacement affects within-firm inequality. Using job ad data, we find firm adoption of information technologies leads to both greater demand for diverse skills and higher pay across skill groups. This accounts for most of the sorting of skills to high paying firms that is central to rising inequality

Cliometric essays on Mexican migration to the United States

There is a lack of cliometric literature addressing the characteristics of Mexican migration during the Age of Mass migration (1850–1914). To fill this void, I analyze an original data set—the Mexican Border Crossing Records (MBCRs) publication N° A3365—to disentangle the initial mechanics of Mexican migration in the early twentieth century. I first offer a historical overview on Mexican migration to the United States in Chapter 1. In Chapter 2, I introduce these novel micro data that record individual characteristics of migrants that crossed the Mexico-US border from 1906 to 1908. In Chapter 3, I address the initial determinants of the Mexican-American migration stream. I use the migrant’s location of last residence and final destination to identify migration corridors at the local level (migration streams between Mexican municipalities and US counties). In addition, I provide a quantitative assessment of the push and pull factors that may explain differences in migration intensity across corridors. These factors include the US-Mexico wage gap, market potentials, living standards and access to railways. In Chapter 4, I use the migrant’s height—a proxy for physical productivity of labor—to quantify the selectivity of Mexican migration. In addition, I exploit the Panic of 1907 as a natural experiment of history to study the speed that migrant self-selection adjust and change to both environmental and economic factors. This financial crisis provides me with exogenous variation in height to evaluate if unexpected shocks affecting the demand of immigrant workers can induce short-run changes in migrant self-selection. To explain shifts in selection patterns, I focus on labor institutions as mechanism of adjustment. Specifically, I study the enganche, a system of labor recruiting that neutralized mobility and job-search costs. In Chapter 5, I exploit the reported locations of birth, last residence and destination to classify migrants based on their chosen migration method: direct or stage migration. The micro data reveal that forty percent of the migrants moved within Mexico before crossing the border. I estimate correlations between stage migration and potential wage at the destination controlling for the immigrants’ age, literacy, sex, marital status and birthplace. In Chapter 6, I offer some concluding remarks. My findings expand our knowledge about the initial patterns of Mexican migration using micro data not analyzed previously. They show that in the early twentieth century, the decision to migrate was a function of diverse forces, which effects and magnitudes varied across Mexican regions. Also, Mexican migration was characterized by an intermediate or positive selection, and labor institutions involved in the migration process shaped migrant self-selection. Finally, Mexicans used stage migration to reach the US border, and it was associated with a significant wage premium at the destination

Gendering the Field

The chapters in this book offer concrete examples from all over the world to show how community livelihoods in mineral-rich tracts can be more sustainable by fully integrating gender concerns into all aspects of the relationship between mining practices and mine affected communities. By looking at the mining industry and the mine-affected communities through a gender lens, the authors indicate a variety of practical strategies to mitigate the impacts of mining on women’s livelihoods without undermining women’s voice and status within the mine-affected communities. The term ‘field’ in the title of this volume is not restricted to the open-cut pits of large scale mining operations which are male-dominated workplaces, or with mining as a masculine, capital-intensive industry, but also connotes the wider range of mineral extractive practices which are carried out informally by women and men of artisanal communities at much smaller geographical scales throughout the mineral-rich tracts of poorer countries

The Americanization of South Africa

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented 19 October, 1998The title of this paper comes from a 1901 book by W.T. Stead, entitled The Americanisation of the World. A British reformer and editor of the London-based Review of Reviews, Stead is perhaps best known to historians as the author of If Christ Came to Chicago, one of the era's most celebrated exposes of urban vice. Fewer may realize that Stead spent several years in the 1890s in South Africa, where he was a close confidante of Cecil John Rhodes. Exposure to South Africa played a germinal role in The Americanisation of the World, in which Stead argued that the United States was destined to displace Great Britain as the world's pre-eminent political, economic and cultural power. In contrast to contemporaries such as F. A. McKenzie, whose 1902 book, The American Invaders, urged action against the "armies of American entrepreneurs conquering British markets," Stead saw the United States' global expansion as irresistable. The choice for Britain's rulers was whether to defy the inevitable and thereby to consign themselves to global irrelevance, or to accept the majority of their one-time colony, forging an Anglo- American commonwealth that would secure for all time the primacy of the virile Anglo-Saxon rac

Exploring the Role of Higher Education in Responsible Deployment of Artificial Intelligence

Higher education is the key driver for the teaching, research, and development of Artificial Intelligence (AI), as it bears responsibility for preparing engineers, scientists, technologists, and corporate leaders who shape and fuel its revolutionary advances. With AI and automation technologies relying on more advanced levels of training, and universities serving as the prime site for their development, faculty views on the implications of this technology are critically important. The purpose of this case study was to gain insights into how academics and disciplinary experts perceive their roles and responsibilities in the teaching, development, and deployment of AI. Using FIU as a case study provided a base for a contextual understanding of the complex issues surrounding AI from the perspective of key actors at a large public university. In conducting the study, 16 faculty from a range of disciplines were interviewed. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed. The data from the interviews were examined to identify the connectedness of ideas and develop themes to classify distinct concepts. The study found that while participants were optimistic about the transformative possibilities of AI for improving human life, they were concerned about its implications. They stressed the intensification of many social challenges by AI, including gender and racial bias in class, gender and race in automated decision-making systems, its negative impact on social media, the use of AI for manipulation of the public, and deceptive practices of internet corporations. The participants also discussed the economic impacts of AI on job markets, particularly the potential for massive job loss, as well as the role of government and higher education in mitigating the adverse impacts of AI through education and appropriate research policies. The findings of this study provide insights into the challenges of a changing society because of AI and how higher education can mitigate its impact. These findings provide a basis for improving organizational policies and practices in response to the imminent technological changes. They also inform educational and research policy formulation to promote social change

The substitution of labor: From technological feasibility to other factors influencing the potential of job automation

Artificial intelligence, machine learning (a subcategory of AI), and robotics are three technologies that perform an increasingly wider variety of routine and even non-routine job tasks. This chapter provides an overview of digitalization and automation along with the three underlying technologies and explores the potential of these technologies to replace human capabilities in the workplace. Subsequently, it discusses a set of factors beyond technological feasibility that influence the pace and scope of job automation. Some of the chapter’s key findings include the following: (1) The majority of jobs will be affected by the automation of individual activities, but only a few have the potential to be completely substituted; (2) the automation potential for non-routine tasks seems to remain limited, especially for tasks involving autonomous mobility, creativity, problem-solving and complex communication; (3) the nature of jobs will change as mundane tasks will be substituted and people will work more closely together with machines; and (4) industries that have a large potential for labor substitution are food and accommodation services, transportation and warehousing, retail trade, wholesale trade and manufacturing

Gendering the Field

The chapters in this book offer concrete examples from all over the world to show how community livelihoods in mineral-rich tracts can be more sustainable by fully integrating gender concerns into all aspects of the relationship between mining practices and mine affected communities. By looking at the mining industry and the mine-affected communities through a gender lens, the authors indicate a variety of practical strategies to mitigate the impacts of mining on women’s livelihoods without undermining women’s voice and status within the mine-affected communities. The term ‘field’ in the title of this volume is not restricted to the open-cut pits of large scale mining operations which are male-dominated workplaces, or with mining as a masculine, capital-intensive industry, but also connotes the wider range of mineral extractive practices which are carried out informally by women and men of artisanal communities at much smaller geographical scales throughout the mineral-rich tracts of poorer countries

Music as Labour

This book brings together research at the intersection of music, cultural industries, management, antiracist politics and gender studies to analyse music as labour, in particular highlighting social inequalities and activism. Providing insights into labour processes and practices, the authors investigate the changing role of manifold actors, institutions and technologies and the corresponding shifts in the valuation and evaluation of music achievements that have shaped the relationship between music, labour, the economy and politics. With research into a variety of geographic regions, chapters shed light on the various ways by which musicians’ work is performed, constructed and managed at different times and show that musicians’ working practices have been marked by precarity, insecurity and short-term contracts long before capitalism invited everybody to ‘be creative’. In doing so, they specifically examine the dynamics in music professions and educational institutions, as well as gatekeepers and mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion. With a specific emphasis on inequalities in the music industries, this book will be essential reading for scholars seeking to understand the collective actions and initiatives that foster participation, inclusion, diversity and fair pay amongst musicians and other workers

Digitalization and the Anthropocene

Great claims have been made about the benefits of dematerialization in a digital service economy. However, digitalization has historically increased environmental impacts at local and planetary scales, affecting labor markets, resource use, governance, and power relationships. Here we study the past, present, and future of digitalization through the lens of three interdependent elements of the Anthropocene: (a) planetary boundaries and stability, (b) equity within and between countries, and (c) human agency and governance, mediated via (i) increasing resource efficiency, (ii) accelerating consumption and scale effects, (iii) expanding political and economic control, and (iv) deteriorating social cohesion. While direct environmental impacts matter, the indirect and systemic effects of digitalization are more profoundly reshaping the relationship between humans, technosphere and planet. We develop three scenarios: planetary instability, green but inhumane, and deliberate for the good. We conclude with identifying leverage points that shift human–digital–Earth interactions toward sustainability