UNTANGLED Midterm Conference

The Conference started with a keynote from Anna Salomons, Professor of Employment and Inequality at Utrecht University. Professor Salomons discussed newly emerging job categories (“new work”) and set the tone for the rest of the event.

Piotr Lewandowski (IBS), who commented on the keynote, stressed the importance of new measurements proposed by Salomons and her co-authors and new stylised facts on connections between innovation and long-term occupational change.

Four very productive thematic sessions followed the keynote. The sessions were devoted to the following issues: Technological change and employment; Skills and education; Technology, growth and value chains; and Firms and households.

Myrielle Gonschor (Leibniz Institute for Economic Research-RWI) presented a paper titled “The Impact of Robots on Labour Market Transitions in Europe”, written jointly with Ronald Bachmann, Piotr Lewandowski and Karol Madoń within the framework of UNTANGLED.

The last presentation in the Technological Change and Employment session was given by Piotr Lewandowski (Institute for Structural Research – IBS). He talked about UNTANGLED research conducted jointly with Karina Doorley, Jan Gromadzki, Dora Tuda, and Philippe Van Kerm on the impact of automation on income inequality in Europe. Their preliminary results show that even though automation impacted employment rates and wages in most European countries, its effect on household income inequality was minimal.

The panel discussion on policy featured by Mario Mariniello (College of Europe), Eric Thode (Bertelsmann Stiftung) and Thomas Ekman Jorgensen (European University Association) followed the sessions.

“The conference provided an excellent opportunity both to showcase the work of UNTANGLED researchers and to hear from others in the fields we’re looking at,” says Mikkel Barslund, who coordinates the UNTANGLED research consortium. “We managed to attract many high-quality papers with findings that will certainly inspire new avenues of research, and I’d like to thank everyone who contributed to the success of this event.”