| Title | Immigration, Robots, and American Lives |
| Date | June 27, 2024 (Thursday) 17:00-18:30 |
| Location | Hybrid (Room 3-802) |
| Abstract | Foreign labor represents a growing fraction of risky occupations that appear to be close substitutes of industrial robots. I investigate how dependency on immigrants interacted with robot adoption shaped a workplace injury risk in high-hazard sectors. Associating a wave of unskilled immigrants and workplace injuries across industries during 1992-2019, I find that immigrant workers substantially replaced native fatalities by crowding out natives out of risky jobs. Associated with cross-industry investment of robots, I also find that robot installation dramatically reduced injury risk, but the aggregate nationwide risk remains unabated from poor investments to riskier labor-intensive sectors (e.g., agriculture and construction). Then, I test a hypothesis that immigration inflow impeded the automation and preserved an injury risk for remaining laborers, including natives. Over-dependency on foreign labor may preserve the risky technology generating a social cost (e.g., disabilities; usage of opioids). |
| Paper | Paper Link |
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| Note | If you want to participate in the seminar by Zoom, please register via the following link: https://list-waseda-jp.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEpf-CsqjguHtASSYRTm94WeXH9lPzS5qDq |