Developing Two Chapters in a Textbook of Labor Economics

I worked as a research assistant for Professor Hong Song at Fudan University (Jan 2024 - Feb 2024).

I developed two chapters in a textbook on labor economics. I conducted a detailed review of the literature on the impact of AI and automation technologies on the labor market, and then developed a version of Acemoglu and Restrepo’s (2018) model that is accessible to undergraduate students. I simplified the complex discussions on general equilibrium, treated the capital market as exogenous, and used more economic intuition rather than mathematical processes to explain the conclusions.

The introduction part is listed here:

(Original Version in Chinese)

在这一节我们想要讨论技术进步对劳动力市场的影响。近些年人工智能、现代机器人等自动化技术飞速发展，特别是2023年Chat-GPT的浪潮席卷全球，这使得社会上有广泛的担忧，认为这些先进的自动化技术将取代人类劳动力，使劳动者面临更加不利的局面；同时，也有人认为这些技术将提高劳动者的生产率，最终惠及劳动者自身。历史发展最终导向何处我们不能知晓，我们希望运用经济学的框架给出一系列假说，并运用现实数据实证检验。

我们将在第2节先介绍该领域内近年来理论模型的进展，随后在第3节具体介绍一个Acemoglu and Restrepo (2018)发展的模型，在这之后我们会在第4节介绍该领域内的实证进展以及中国的相关实证证据。

(Translated version in English)

In this section we will discuss the impact of technological progress on the labor market. In recent years, automation technologies such as artificial intelligence and modern robots have developed rapidly, especially the wave of Chat-GPT sweeping the world in 2023, causing widespread concern in society that these advanced automation technologies will replace the human labor, leaving workers in a disadvantage situation. At the same time, some people believe that these technologies will increase the productivity of workers and finally benefit the workers themselves. We might not know where historical development will ultimately lead. We hope to use the economics framework to come up with a series of hypotheses and empirically test them using real-world data.

This chapter is organized as follow: we will first introduce the progress of theoretical models in this field in recent years in Section 2, and then introduce a model developed by Acemoglu and Restrepo (2018) in Section 3. Finally, we will introduce empirical progress and relevant evidence from China in Section 4.

Other parts are not currently avaible online.