Shift-Share Instrumental Variables

Score ↕	Year ↕	Title	Authors ↕	Theme ↕
10	2013	The China Syndrome: Local Labor Market Effects of Import Competition in the United States core ↗ This paper is the foundational study of the 'China shock' literature, directly establishing the shift-share instrumental variable design using local industry shares and foreign shifts. It provides the primary empirical evidence for the local labor market effects of import competition, which is a core application area for the researcher's project. We analyze the effect of rising Chinese import competition between 1990 and 2007 on US local labor markets, exploiting cross-market variation in import exposure stemming from initial differences in industry specialization and instrumenting for US imports using changes in Chinese imports by other high-income countries. Rising imports cause higher unemployment, lower labor force participation, and reduced wages in local labor markets that house import-competing manufacturing industries. In our main specification, import competition explains one-quarter of the contemporaneous aggregate decline in US manufacturing employment. Transfer benefits payments for unemployment, disability, retirement...	David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon Hanson
10	2011	Skills, Tasks and Technologies: Implications for Employment and Earnings core ↗ This paper is a foundational text that establishes the task-based model, which serves as the theoretical underpinning for occupation-level shift-share designs and the automation literature discussed in the project. It directly motivates the construction of exposure indices by linking technological change to task-specific substitution, thereby connecting the theoretical axis with the empirical applications of automation and polarization. A central organizing framework of the voluminous recent literature studying changes in the returns to skills and the evolution of earnings inequality is what we refer to as the canonical model, which elegantly and powerfully operationalizes the supply and demand for skills by assuming two distinct skill groups that perform two different and imperfectly substitutable tasks or produce two imperfectly substitutable goods. Technology is assumed to take a factor-augmenting form, which, by complementing either high or low skill workers, can generate skill biased demand shifts. In this paper, we argue that despite its notable successes, the canonical model is largely silent on a number of central...	Daron Acemoğlu, David Autor
10	2020	Bartik Instruments: What, When, Why, and How core ↗ This paper provides a foundational theoretical and practical guide to the Bartik instrument design, directly addressing the core methodology of the project. It clarifies the identification assumptions, specifically the exogeneity of shares, and offers diagnostics for assessing the validity of the research design, which are central to the methodological axis of the proposed study. The Bartik instrument is formed by interacting local industry shares and national industry growth rates. We show that the typical use of a Bartik instrument assumes a pooled exposure research design, where the shares measure differential exposure to common shocks, and identification is based on exogeneity of the shares. Next, we show how the Bartik instrument weights each of the exposure designs. Finally, we discuss how to assess the plausibility of the research design. We illustrate our results through two applications: estimating the elasticity of labor supply, and estimating the elasticity of substitution between immigrants and natives. (JEL C51, F14, J15, J22, L60, R23, R32)	Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, Isaac Sorkin, Henry Swift
10	2001	Immigrant Inflows, Native Outflows, and the Local Labor Market Impacts of Higher Immigration core ↗ This paper is a foundational empirical study in the immigration shift-share literature, directly addressing the methodological axis of estimating immigration effects using local labor market variation. It provides key evidence on the wage and employment impacts of immigrant inflows, which serves as a critical benchmark and application for the Bartik instrument design central to the researcher's project. This article uses 1990 census data to study the effects of immigrant inflows on occupation-specific labor market outcomes. I find that intercity mobility rates of natives and earlier immigrants are insensitive to immigrant inflows. However, occupation-specific wages and employment rates are systematically lower in cities with higher relative supplies of workers in a given occupation. The results imply that immigrant inflows over the 1980s reduced wages and employment rates of low-skilled natives in traditional gateway cities like Miami and Los Angeles by 1-3 percentage points. Copyright 2001 by University of Chicago Press.	David Card
10	2015	Import Competition and the Great US Employment Sag of the 2000s core ↗ This paper is a core contribution to the China shock literature, directly addressing the local labor market effects of import competition central to the project's scope. It extends the standard shift-share design by incorporating general equilibrium input-output linkages, bridging the gap between local partial-equilibrium estimates and aggregate employment outcomes. Even before the Great Recession, US employment growth was unimpressive. Between 2000 and 2007, the economy gave back the considerable employment gains achieved during the 1990s, with a historic contraction in manufacturing employment being a prime contributor to the slump. We estimate that import competition from China, which surged after 2000, was a major force behind both recent reductions in US manufacturing employment and—through input-output linkages and other general equilibrium channels—weak overall US job growth. Our central estimates suggest job losses from rising Chinese import competition over 1999–2011 in the range of 2.0–2.4 million.	Daron Acemoğlu, David Autor, David Dorn, et al.
10	2014	Fiscal Stimulus in a Monetary Union: Evidence from US Regions core ↗ This paper is a foundational study of the Bartik instrumental variable design, utilizing regional military procurement shares as an instrument to estimate fiscal multipliers. It directly aligns with the project's empirical applications axis, specifically the work of Nakamura and Steinsson (2014) on fiscal policy and the use of shift-share instruments to purge aggregate demand shocks. We use rich historical data on military procurement to estimate the effects of government spending. We exploit regional variation in military buildups to estimate an “open economy relative multiplier” of approximately 1.5. We develop a framework for interpreting this estimate and relating it to estimates of the standard closed economy aggregate multiplier. The latter is highly sensitive to how strongly aggregate monetary and tax policy “leans against the wind.” Our open economy relative multiplier “differences out” these effects because monetary and tax policies are uniform across the nation. Our evidence indicates that demand shocks can have large effects on output. (JEL E12, E32, E62...	Emi Nakamura, Jón Steinsson
10	2014	Trade Adjustment: Worker-Level Evidence* ↗ This paper is a foundational empirical study in the 'China shock' literature that utilizes the shift-share instrument design to estimate the labor market effects of import competition from China. It provides critical worker-level evidence on earnings, employment, and mobility, directly addressing the project's core focus on the distributional consequences of trade shocks. Abstract We analyze the effect of exposure to international trade on earnings and employment of U.S. workers from 1992 through 2007 by exploiting industry shocks to import competition stemming from China’s spectacular rise as a manufacturing exporter paired with longitudinal data on individual earnings by employer spanning close to two decades. Individuals who in 1991 worked in manufacturing industries that experienced high subsequent import growth garner lower cumulative earnings, face elevated risk of obtaining public disability benefits, and spend less time working for their initial employers, less time in their initial two-digit manufacturing industries, and more time working elsewhere...	David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon Hanson, et al.
10	2019	Shift-Share Designs: Theory and Inference* core ↗ This paper directly addresses the methodological core of the project by developing novel inference methods for shift-share designs to correct for cross-regional correlation in residuals. It provides essential theoretical and practical diagnostics for researchers using Bartik instruments, specifically targeting the validity issues highlighted in the methodological axis. Abstract We study inference in shift-share regression designs, such as when a regional outcome is regressed on a weighted average of sectoral shocks, using regional sector shares as weights. We conduct a placebo exercise in which we estimate the effect of a shift-share regressor constructed with randomly generated sectoral shocks on actual labor market outcomes across U.S. commuting zones. Tests based on commonly used standard errors with 5% nominal significance level reject the null of no effect in up to 55% of the placebo samples. We use a stylized economic model to show that this overrejection problem arises because regression residuals are correlated across regions with similar sectoral...	Rodrigo Adão, Michal Kolesár, Eduardo Morales
10	2021	Replication package for: Quasi-Experimental Shift-Share Research Designs core ↗ This replication package directly supports the shifts-based identification framework by Borusyak, Hull & Jaravel (2022), which is a central methodological axis of the project. It provides essential empirical materials to study the distinct identifying assumptions and diagnostics of quasi-experimental shift-share designs. This package contains all public data underlying the analyses in Borusyak et al. (2021), instructions for how remaining data can be accessed, and code to reproduce all datasets and analyses. Full citation: Borusyak, Kirill, Peter Hull, and Xavier Jaravel (2021): Quasi-Experimental Shift-Share Research Designs. Review of Economic Studies	Kirill Borusyak, Peter Hull, Xavier Jaravel
10	2020	Importing Political Polarization? The Electoral Consequences of Rising Trade Exposure core [Title only] This paper is a seminal study in the China shock literature that explicitly utilizes a shift-share (Bartik) instrument to analyze the causal effect of import competition on political polarization. It perfectly aligns with the empirical applications axis by linking local labor market exposure to trade shocks with electoral outcomes, a key extension of the standard employment and wage analyses. No abstract available.	Autor, Dorn, Hanson, et al.
10	2020	Robots and Employment: Evidence from US Commuting Zones, 1990-2007 core [Title only] This title strongly suggests a direct replication or extension of Acemoglu & Restrepo (2020) using a shift-share design to measure robot adoption's impact on local labor markets. It aligns perfectly with the project's core interest in automation, the task-based model, and the distinction between local partial-equilibrium effects and broader economic outcomes. No abstract available.	Acemoglu, Restrepo
9	2013	The Growth of Low-Skill Service Jobs and the Polarization of the US Labor Market core ↗ This is a seminal paper in the polarization literature that directly applies the task-based model framework central to the researcher's theoretical axis. It establishes the foundational mechanism of routine-biased technological change, which underpins the occupational shift-share instruments discussed in the project. We offer a unified analysis of the growth of low-skill service occupations between 1980 and 2005 and the concurrent polarization of US employment and wages. We hypothesize that polarization stems from the interaction between consumer preferences, which favor variety over specialization, and the falling cost of automating routine, codifiable job tasks. Applying a spatial equilibrium model, we corroborate four implications of this hypothesis. Local labor markets that specialized in routine tasks differentially adopted information technology, reallocated low-skill labor into service occupations (employment polarization), experienced earnings growth at the tails of the distribution (wage...	David Autor, David Dorn
9	2018	Robots at Work core ↗ This paper is a foundational study in the automation literature, directly addressing the project's focus on robot adoption and its labor market effects. It employs an instrumental variable strategy based on task comparative advantage, which aligns with the methodological axis of shift-share designs and Bartik instruments for analyzing technology shocks. We analyze for the first time the economic contributions of modern industrial robots, which are flexible, versatile, and autonomous machines. We use novel panel data on robot adoption within industries in seventeen countries from 1993 to 2007 and new instrumental variables that rely on robots’ comparative advantage in specific tasks. Our findings suggest that increased robot use contributed approximately 0.36 percentage points to annual labor productivity growth, while at the same time raising total factor productivity and lowering output prices. Our estimates also suggest that robots did not significantly reduce total employment, although they did reduce low-skilled workers’ employment...	Georg Graetz, Guy Michaels
9	2019	When Work Disappears: Manufacturing Decline and the Falling Marriage Market Value of Young Men core ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) design to study the labor market effects of the China shock, a core empirical application of the project. It utilizes industry-level international competition shifts weighted by local employment shares to identify causal impacts on male economic stability, aligning perfectly with the trade shock and social outcome dimensions of the research agenda. We exploit the gender-specific components of large-scale labor demand shocks stemming from rising international manufacturing competition to test how shifts in the relative economic stature of young men versus young women affected marriage, fertility, and children’s living circumstances during 1990–2014. On average, trade shocks differentially reduce employment and earnings of young adult males. Consistent with Becker’s model of household specialization, shocks to males’ relative earnings reduce marriage and fertility. Consistent with prominent sociological accounts, these shocks heighten male idleness and premature mortality, and raise the share of mothers who are unwed and the share of...	David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon Hanson
9	2021	Occupational, industry, and geographic exposure to artificial intelligence: A novel dataset and its potential uses core ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis of the project by developing an AI-capability index (AIOE) that functions as an occupation-level shift-share exposure measure, analogous to the robot and task-based instruments discussed. It provides the core data infrastructure needed to apply shift-share designs to the emerging AI domain, aligning with the researcher's interest in LLM task-exposure measures and the distinction between local partial-equilibrium and aggregate effects. Abstract Research Summary We create and validate a new measure of an occupation's exposure to AI that we call the AI Occupational Exposure (AIOE). We use the AIOE to construct a measure of AI exposure at the industry level, which we call the AI Industry Exposure (AIIE) and a measure of AI exposure at the county level, which we call the AI Geographic Exposure (AIGE). We also describe several ways in which the AIOE can be used to create firm level measures of AI exposure. We validate the measures and describe how they can be used in different applications by management, organization and strategy scholars. Managerial Summary Although artificial intelligence (AI) promises to spur economic...	Edward W. Felten, Manav Raj, Robert Seamans
9	2018	Replication data for: The Race between Man and Machine: Implications of Technology for Growth, Factor Shares, and Employment core ↗ This paper provides the foundational task-based theoretical framework that underpins the automation literature and shift-share instrument designs discussed in the project. It explicitly models the competition between automation and new task creation, which is central to understanding the mechanisms behind robot adoption and labor market effects in the empirical applications. We examine the concerns that new technologies will render labor redundant in a framework in which tasks previously performed by labor can be automated and new versions of existing tasks, in which labor has a comparative advantage, can be created. In a static version where capital is fixed and technology is exogenous, automation reduces employment and the labor share, and may even reduce wages, while the creation of new tasks has the opposite effects. Our full model endogenizes capital accumulation and the direction of research toward automation and the creation of new tasks. If the long-run rental rate of capital relative to the wage is sufficiently low, the long-run equilibrium involves...	Acemoglu, Daron, Restrepo, Pascual
8	2003	The Skill Content of Recent Technological Change: An Empirical Exploration core ↗ This paper establishes the foundational task-based framework (Autor, Levy & Murnane 2003) that underpins the theoretical axis of the project, particularly regarding automation and occupation-level exposure indices. It provides the core mechanistic link between technological shocks and labor demand shifts, serving as a critical theoretical antecedent to the shift-share applications discussed in the project description. We apply an understanding of what computers do to study how computerization alters job skill demands. We argue that computer capital (1) substitutes for workers in performing cognitive and manual tasks that can be accomplished by following explicit rules; and (2) complements workers in performing nonroutine problem-solving and complex communications tasks. Provided that these tasks are imperfect substitutes, our model implies measurable changes in the composition of job tasks, which we explore using representative data on task input for 1960 to 1998. We find that within industries, occupations, and education groups, computerization is associated with reduced labor input of routine manual...	David Autor, Frank Levy, Richard J. Murnane
8	2019	Automation and New Tasks: How Technology Displaces and Reinstates Labor core ↗ This paper establishes the foundational task-based theoretical framework that underpins the occupation-level shift-share instruments discussed in the project's theoretical axis. It provides the key mechanisms of displacement and reinstatement that justify using task content to measure exposure to automation shocks in empirical applications. We present a framework for understanding the effects of automation and other types of technological changes on labor demand, and use it to interpret changes in US employment over the recent past. At the center of our framework is the allocation of tasks to capital and labor—the task content of production. Automation, which enables capital to replace labor in tasks it was previously engaged in, shifts the task content of production against labor because of a displacement effect. As a result, automation always reduces the labor share in value added and may reduce labor demand even as it raises productivity. The effects of automation are counterbalanced by the creation of new tasks in which...	Daron Acemoğlu, Pascual Restrepo
8	2014	Explaining Job Polarization: Routine-Biased Technological Change and Offshoring core ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis of the project by linking job polarization to routine-biased technological change and offshoring, which are key mechanisms underlying shift-share instruments. It provides essential empirical context for the automation and trade shock components of the researcher's framework. This paper documents the pervasiveness of job polarization in 16 Western European countries over the period 1993–2010. It then develops and estimates a framework to explain job polarization using routine-biased technological change and offshoring. This model can explain much of both total job polarization and the split into within-industry and between-industry components. (JEL J21, J23, J24, M55, O33)	Maarten Goos, Alan Manning, Anna Salomons
8	2009	Immigration and Inequality ↗ This paper directly addresses the immigration application of shift-share designs, which is a core empirical domain of the project. It critically evaluates the cross-city comparison methodology often associated with shift-share instruments and provides key estimates on wage inequality effects relevant to the methodological debates on identification. Immigration is often viewed as a proximate cause of the rising wage gap between highand low-skilled workers. Nevertheless, there is controversy over the appropriate theoretical and empirical framework for measuring the presumed effect, and over the precise magnitudes involved. This paper offers an overview and synthesis of existing knowledge on the relationship between immigration and inequality, focusing on evidence from cross-city comparisons in the U.S. While some researchers have claimed that a cross-city research design is inherently flawed, I argue that the evidence from cross-city comparisons is remarkably consistent with recent findings based on aggregate time series data. In...	David Card
8	2015	Untangling Trade and Technology: Evidence from Local Labour Markets core ↗ This paper directly addresses two core pillars of the project by empirically disentangling the effects of trade shocks (specifically the China shock) and technology shocks on local labor markets. It provides critical evidence on how industry composition and task intensity determine exposure to these distinct shifts, aligning closely with the theoretical and empirical frameworks of the Bartik IV design. We juxtapose the effects of trade and technology on employment in US local labour markets between 1980 and 2007. Labour markets whose initial industry composition exposes them to rising Chinese import competition experience significant falls in employment, particularly in manufacturing and among non-college workers. Labour markets susceptible to computerisation due to specialisation in routine task-intensive activities instead experience occupational polarisation within manufacturing and non-manufacturing but do not experience a net employment decline. Trade impacts rise in the 2000s as imports accelerate, while the effect of technology appears to shift from automation of production...	David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon Hanson
8	2023	GPTs are GPTs: An Early Look at the Labor Market Impact Potential of Large Language Models core ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis by constructing LLM task-exposure measures, which are the occupation-level analogue of the Bartik instrument described in the project. It provides key empirical context for the automation literature, specifically regarding how new technologies affect different occupations based on task content rather than just industry composition. We investigate the potential implications of large language models (LLMs), such as Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPTs), on the U.S. labor market, focusing on the increased capabilities arising from LLM-powered software compared to LLMs on their own. Using a new rubric, we assess occupations based on their alignment with LLM capabilities, integrating both human expertise and GPT-4 classifications. Our findings reveal that around 80% of the U.S. workforce could have at least 10% of their work tasks affected by the introduction of LLMs, while approximately 19% of workers may see at least 50% of their tasks impacted. We do not make predictions about the development or adoption timeline...	Tyna Eloundou, Sam Manning, Pamela Mishkin, et al.
8	2022	Tasks, Automation, and the Rise in U.S. Wage Inequality core ↗ This paper establishes the foundational task-based framework and empirical link between automation and wage inequality that underpins the occupation-level shift-share designs discussed in the project. It directly addresses the theoretical axis regarding how technology shocks affect tasks differentially and contributes to the automation literature central to the researcher's scope. We document that between 50% and 70% of changes in the U.S. wage structure over the last four decades are accounted for by relative wage declines of worker groups specialized in routine tasks in industries experiencing rapid automation. We develop a conceptual framework where tasks across industries are allocated to different types of labor and capital. Automation technologies expand the set of tasks performed by capital, displacing certain worker groups from jobs for which they have comparative advantage. This framework yields a simple equation linking wage changes of a demographic group to the task displacement it experiences. We report robust evidence in favor of this relationship and...	Daron Acemoğlu, Pascual Restrepo
8	2019	The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on the Labor Market core ↗ This paper introduces the patent-text-overlap exposure method, which is explicitly cited in the project's theoretical axis as an occupation-level analogue to the Bartik instrument. It applies this task-based exposure measure to predict labor market impacts, directly aligning with the project's focus on measuring technology exposure and its empirical consequences. I develop a new method to predict the impacts of a technology on occupations. I use the overlap between the text of job task descriptions and the text of patents to construct a measure of the exposure of tasks to automation. I first apply the method to historical cases such as software and industrial robots. I establish that occupations I measure as highly exposed to previous automation technologies saw declines in employment and wages over the relevant periods. I use the fitted parameters from the case studies to predict the impacts of artificial intelligence. I find that, in contrast to software and robots, AI is directed at high-skilled tasks. Under the assumption that the historical...	Michael A. Webb
8	2021	Firm-Level Exposure to Automation: Evidence from Germany [Title only] This paper likely investigates how firm-level exposure to automation technologies affects labor market outcomes, aligning with the task-based model and robot adoption literature central to the project. It probably provides micro-evidence relevant to the shift-share design's application in measuring technological shocks, though it may lack a specific focus on the instrumental variable construction or general-equilibrium bridging. No abstract available.	Dauth, Findeisen, Suedekum, et al.
6	2022	The Effect of Trade on Workers and Voters [Title only] The title suggests a broad survey or theoretical overview of trade effects, which likely intersects with the project's trade shock axis but may lack the specific focus on shift-share instrumentation or empirical estimation techniques. Without evidence of a methodological contribution regarding Bartik instruments or a rigorous empirical application using this design, its direct relevance to the core methodological and applied axes remains moderate. No abstract available.	Che, Lu, Pierce, et al.
6	2012	Do Immigrants Crowd Out Natives in an Unemployment Insurance System? Evidence from German Reunification [Title only] This paper addresses the immigration domain, a core empirical application of the project, by investigating the labor market and fiscal effects of immigration using German reunification as a natural experiment. While it likely employs shift-share or similar identification strategies common in immigration literature, its specific focus on unemployment insurance crowding out represents a niche fiscal angle rather than the standard wage/employment outcomes, making it moderately relevant but not centrally aligned with the primary methodological or application axes. No abstract available.	Glitz
6	2019	Trade and Labor Market Dynamics: General Equilibrium Analysis of the China Trade Rise [Title only] The paper addresses the core unifying concern of the project by bridging the gap between partial-equilibrium shift-share estimates and aggregate general-equilibrium effects in the context of the China trade shock. However, without an abstract, it is unclear if the paper focuses on the specific methodological diagnostics of the Bartik IV design or merely applies a general equilibrium framework to the same empirical setting. No abstract available.	Caliendo, Dvorkin, Parro
5	2018	What Can Machines Learn, and What Does It Mean for Occupations and the Economy? core [Title only] The title suggests a general discussion on machine learning's economic impact rather than a specific empirical application of the shift-share instrumental variable design. It may contain relevant theoretical framing for occupation-level exposure but likely lacks the rigorous identification strategies or Bartik-style construction central to the researcher's project. No abstract available.	Brynjolfsson, Mitchell, Rock
3	2013	Regional Effects of Trade Reform: What is the Correct Measure of Liberalization? [Title only] This paper likely focuses on the construction and comparison of trade liberalization indices rather than the specific shift-share IV methodology or its modern identification critiques. It may be tangentially relevant to the trade shock literature but lacks the explicit methodological focus on Bartik instruments or the structural general-equilibrium distinctions central to the project. No abstract available.	Kovak
2	2023	Many Weak Instruments and Inference in the Presence of Many Nuisance Parameters core [Title only] This paper focuses on econometric inference methods for models with many weak instruments and nuisance parameters, which is a general statistical topic not specific to the shift-share identification framework. It does not appear to address the specific methodological debates, empirical applications, or structural models central to the researcher's project on Bartik instruments. No abstract available.	Borusyak, Hull
2	1991	Who Benefits from State and Local Economic Development Policies? core [Title only] This title suggests an evaluation of fiscal policy outcomes, which relates tangentially to the fiscal policy axis but likely focuses on direct estimation rather than the methodological nuances of shift-share instruments. It does not appear to address the core identification challenges, theoretical frameworks, or specific trade/automation/immigration applications central to the project. No abstract available.	Bartik
10	2019	Robots and Jobs: Evidence from US Labor Markets ↗ This is the foundational paper for the automation/robots application axis, directly employing the shift-share (Bartik) design to estimate the local labor market effects of robot adoption. It explicitly defines the instrument using industry-level technological advances and local industry employment shares, serving as the primary empirical benchmark for the theoretical and methodological discussions in the project. We study the effects of industrial robots on US labor markets. We show theoretically that robots may reduce employment and wages and that their local impacts can be estimated using variation in exposure to robots—defined from industry-level advances in robotics and local industry employment. We estimate robust negative effects of robots on employment and wages across commuting zones. We also show that areas most exposed to robots after 1990 do not exhibit any differential trends before then, and robots’ impact is distinct from other capital and technologies. One more robot per thousand workers reduces the employment-to-population ratio by 0.2 percentage points and wages by 0.42%.	Daron Acemoğlu, Pascual Restrepo
10	2016	The China Shock: Learning from Labor-Market Adjustment to Large Changes in Trade ↗ This paper is a foundational text in the 'China shock' literature, directly utilizing the shift-share instrumental variable design to estimate the local labor market effects of import competition. It provides the core empirical evidence and theoretical motivation for the project's primary application domain on trade shocks and adjustment costs. China's emergence as a great economic power has induced an epochal shift in patterns of world trade. Simultaneously, it has challenged much of the received empirical wisdom about how labor markets adjust to trade shocks. Alongside the heralded consumer benefits of expanded trade are substantial adjustment costs and distributional consequences. These impacts are most visible in the local labor markets in which the industries exposed to foreign competition are concentrated. Adjustment in local labor markets is remarkably slow, with wages and labor-force participation rates remaining depressed and unemployment rates remaining elevated for at least a full decade after the China trade shock...	David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon Hanson
10	2017	Robots and Jobs: Evidence from US Labor Markets ↗ This is the seminal Acemoglu and Restrepo (2020) paper that directly applies the shift-share Bartik design to estimate the labor market effects of robot adoption, a core topic in the project. It establishes the key mechanisms and empirical findings regarding automation exposure using the national industry penetration weighted by local employment shares, which is a primary focus of the empirical applications axis. As robots and other computer-assisted technologies take over tasks previously performed by labor, there is increasing concern about the future of jobs and wages. We analyze the effect of the increase in industrial robot usage between 1990 and 2007 on US local labor markets. Using a model in which robots compete against human labor in the production of different tasks, we show that robots may reduce employment and wages, and that the local labor market effects of robots can be estimated by regressing the change in employment and wages on the exposure to robots in each local labor market-defined from the national penetration of robots into each industry and the local distribution of...	Daron Acemoğlu, Pascual Restrepo
10	2014	THE RISE OF THE EAST AND THE FAR EAST: GERMAN LABOR MARKETS AND TRADE INTEGRATION ↗ This paper is a core application of the shift-share (Bartik) IV design, utilizing the foreign-shift variant where instruments are constructed from other high-income countries' trade flows weighted by local industry composition. It directly addresses the project's central focus on trade shocks, methodological identification, and the heterogeneous effects of trade integration on local labor markets. We analyze the effects of the unprecedented rise in trade between Germany and “the East” (China and Eastern Europe) in the period 1988–2008 on German local labor markets. Using detailed administrative data, we exploit the cross-regional variation in initial industry structures and use trade flows of other high-income countries as instruments for regional import and export exposure. We find that the rise of the East in the world economy caused substantial job losses in German regions specialized in import-competing industries, both in manufacturing and beyond. Regions specialized in export-oriented industries, however, experienced even stronger employment gains and lower unemployment. In the...	Wolfgang Dauth, Sebastian Findeisen, Jens Suedekum
10	2018	Shift-Share Instruments and the Impact of Immigration ↗ This paper directly addresses the project's core methodological axis by critiquing the standard shifts-based shift-share IV design used in immigration research. It highlights key identification issues, such as the conflation of short- and long-run effects, and proposes a modified instrumentation procedure, which is central to understanding the practical diagnostics and limitations of Bartik instruments. A large literature exploits geographic variation in the concentration of immigrants to identify their impact on a variety of outcomes. To address the endogeneity of immigrants' location choices, the most commonly-used instrument interacts national inflows by country of origin with immigrants' past geographic distribution. We present evidence that estimates based on this "shiftshare" instrument conflate the short-and long-run responses to immigration shocks. If the spatial distribution of immigrant inflows is stable over time, the instrument is likely to be correlated with ongoing responses to previous supply shocks. Estimates based on the conventional shift-share instrument are therefore...	David A. Jaeger, Joakim Ruist, Jan Stuhler
10	2017	Robots and Jobs: Evidence from US Labor Markets ↗ This is the foundational empirical paper establishing the Bartik instrument approach for studying robot adoption and its local labor market effects. It directly aligns with the automation axis and the methodological focus on shift-share designs, providing the core evidence for negative employment and wage impacts in the US. We study the effects of industrial robots on US labor markets. We show theoretically that robots may reduce employment and wages and that their local impacts can be estimated using variation in exposure to robots—defined from industry-level advances in robotics and local industry employment. We estimate robust negative effects of robots on employment and wages across commuting zones. We also show that areas most exposed to robots after 1990 do not exhibit any differential trends before then, and robots’ impact is distinct from other capital and technologies. One more robot per thousand workers reduces the employment-to-population ratio by 0.2 percentage points and wages by 0.42%.	Daron Acemoğlu, Pascual Restrepo
10	2018	Bartik Instruments: What, When, Why, and How ↗ This paper provides a foundational methodological clarification of the Bartik instrument's underlying identification assumptions, directly addressing the core research design of the project. It bridges the gap between the shares-based and shifts-based frameworks by analyzing pooled exposure designs and offering practical diagnostics, which are central to the methodological axis of the study. The Bartik instrument is formed by interacting local industry shares and national industry growth rates. We show that the typical use of a Bartik instrument assumes a pooled exposure research design, where the shares measure differential exposure to common shocks, and identification is based on exogeneity of the shares. Next, we show how the Bartik instrument weights each of the exposure designs. Finally, we discuss how to assess the plausibility of the research design. We illustrate our results through three applications: estimating the elasticity of labor supply, estimating local labor market effects of Chinese imports, and estimating the elasticity of substitution between immigrants and...	Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, Isaac Sorkin, Henry Swift
10	2013	The China Syndrome: Local Labor Market Effects of Import Competition in the United States ↗ [Title only] This is the seminal paper by Autor, Dorn, and Hanson (2013) that established the China shock as a primary application of the shift-share instrumental variable design. It directly aligns with the project's empirical axis on trade shocks by estimating the local labor market effects of import competition using industry-level exposure instruments. No abstract available.	David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon Hanson
10	2018	Quasi-Experimental Shift-Share Research Designs ↗ This paper provides a foundational econometric framework for shift-share instrumental variable (SSIV) designs, directly addressing the methodological axis of the project. It establishes conditions for consistency under endogenous shares, which is central to the ongoing debate between shares-based and shifts-based identification strategies. Many studies use shift-share (or "Bartik") instruments, which average a set of shocks with exposure share weights. We provide a new econometric framework for shift-share instrumental variable (SSIV) regressions in which identification follows from the quasi-random assignment of shocks, while exposure shares are allowed to be endogenous. The framework is motivated by an equivalence result: the orthogonality between a shift-share instrument and an unobserved residual can be represented as the orthogonality between the underlying shocks and a shock-level unobservable. SSIV regression coefficients can similarly be obtained from an equivalent shock-level regression, motivating shock-level...	Kirill Borusyak, Peter Hull, Xavier Jaravel
10	2016	The China Shock: Learning from Labor Market Adjustment to Large Changes in Trade ↗ This paper is a core reference for the trade shock applications of the shift-share design, specifically detailing the China shock literature and its local labor market effects. It directly addresses the project's focus on import exposure instruments, adjustment costs, and the distinction between local partial-equilibrium outcomes and broader economic impacts. China’s emergence as a great economic power has induced an epochal shift in patterns of world trade. Simultaneously, it has toppled much of the received empirical wisdom about how labor markets adjust to trade shocks. Alongside its heralded consumer benefits, trade has both significant distributional costs, which theory has long recognized, and substantial adjustment costs, which the literature has tended to downplay. These adjustment costs mean that trade impacts are most visible not in national-level outcomes for broad skill types, as canonical theory would suggest, but in the local labor markets in which the industries most exposed to foreign competition are concentrated. Adjustment in...	David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon Hanson
10	2025	A Practical Guide to Shift-Share Instruments ↗ This paper directly addresses the core methodological axis of the project by synthesizing the competing shares-based and shifts-based identification frameworks. It provides essential practical diagnostics and checklists for implementing shift-share instrumental variable designs central to the researcher's study. A recent econometric literature shows two distinct paths for identification with shift-share instruments, leveraging either many exogenous shifts or exogenous shares. We present the core logic of both paths and practical takeaways via simple checklists. A variety of empirical settings illustrate key points.	Kirill Borusyak, Peter Hull, Xavier Jaravel
10	2019	Automation and New Tasks: How Technology Displaces and Reinstates Labor ↗ This paper establishes the foundational task-based framework that underpins the theoretical axis of the project, explaining the mechanisms of labor displacement and reinstatement central to automation and shift-share designs. It directly informs the construction of occupation-level exposure indices and the empirical analysis of how technology shocks differentially affect labor demand. We present a framework for understanding the effects of automation and other types of technological changes on labor demand, and use it to interpret changes in US employment over the recent past. At the center of our framework is the allocation of tasks to capital and labor the task content of production. Automation, which enables capital to replace labor in tasks it was previously engaged in, shifts the task content of production against labor because of a displacement effect. As a result, automation always reduces the labor share in value added and may reduce labor demand even as it raises productivity.The effects of automation are counterbalanced by the creation of new tasks in which...	Daron Acemoğlu, Pascual Restrepo
10	2012	The China Syndrome: Local Labor Market Effects of Import Competition in the United States ↗ This paper is the foundational study of the China shock literature, directly implementing the shift-share instrumental variable design by combining US industry shares with foreign Chinese import shifts. It serves as the primary empirical reference for the trade shocks axis and establishes the core methodology and key findings regarding local labor market impacts that define this research project. We analyze the effect of rising Chinese import competition between 1990 and 2007 on local U.S. labor markets, exploiting cross-market variation in import exposure stemming from initial differences in industry specialization while instrumenting for imports using changes in Chinese imports by industry to other high-income countries. Rising exposure increases unemployment, lowers labor force participation, and reduces wages in local labor markets. Conservatively, it explains one-quarter of the contemporaneous aggregate decline in U.S. manufacturing employment. Transfer benefits payments for unemployment, disability, retirement, and healthcare also rise sharply in exposed labor markets.	David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon Hanson
10	2013	Untangling Trade and Technology: Evidence from Local Labor Markets ↗ This paper directly addresses the core empirical application of the trade shock (China shock) literature using local labor market data, which is central to the project's scope. It explicitly juxtaposes trade and technology effects, aligning perfectly with the methodological axis distinguishing shifts-based and shares-based instruments and the theoretical axis on task-based models. We juxtapose the effects of trade and technology on employment in U.S. local labor markets between 1990 and 2007. Labor markets whose initial industry composition exposes them to rising Chinese import competition experience significant falls in employment, particularly in manufacturing and among non-college workers. Labor markets susceptible to computerization due to specialization in routine task-intensive activities experience significant occupational polarization within manufacturing and nonmanufacturing but no net employment decline. Trade impacts rise in the 2000s as imports accelerate, while the effect of technology appears to shift from automation of production activities in...	David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon Hanson
10	2022	Bartik Instruments: An Applied Introduction ↗ This paper is a direct applied introduction to Bartik instruments, which are the central methodological focus of the project. It explicitly addresses how these instruments isolate treatment variation from common shocks, aligning perfectly with the project's examination of the design's mechanics and identification assumptions. ABSTRACT This article provides an applied introduction to Bartik instruments. The instruments attempt to reduce familiar endogeneity concerns in differential exposure designs (e.g., panel regressions with unit and time fixed effects). They isolate treatment variation due to the differential impact of common shocks on units with distinct pre-determined exposures. As a result, the instruments purge the treatment variation of possibly confounding factors varying across units over time. Given their broad applicability, Bartik instruments promise to provide researchers with a versatile new tool in their empirical toolbox to investigate relevant accounting questions. JEL Classifications: C51; M40.	Matthias Breuer
10	2018	Shift-Share Designs: Theory and Inference ↗ This paper is a core methodological contribution that directly addresses the identification and inference challenges in shift-share designs, which is a central focus of the project. It provides the theoretical foundation and practical diagnostics (such as robust standard errors) necessary to evaluate the validity of the Bartik instrument used across trade, automation, and immigration applications. We study inference in shift-share regression designs, such as when a regional outcome is regressed on a weighted average of sectoral shocks, using regional sector shares as weights. We conduct a placebo exercise in which we estimate the effect of a shift-share regressor constructed with randomly generated sectoral shocks on actual labor market outcomes across U.S. commuting zones. Tests based on commonly used standard errors with 5% nominal significance level reject the null of no effect in up to 55% of the placebo samples. We use a stylized economic model to show that this overrejection problem arises because regression residuals are correlated across regions with similar sectoral shares...	Rodrigo Adão, Michal Kolesár, Eduardo Morales
10	2018	The effects of import competition on health in the local economy ↗ This paper is a core component of the China shock literature, directly addressing the health outcomes associated with local labor markets exposed to import competition. It empirically validates the broader socio-economic impacts of the shift-share instrument design in the context of trade shocks. We provide evidence that average mental, physical, and general health worsens for employed workers in local U.S. labor markets exposed to greater import competition from China. The effects are greatest for mental health. Moving a region from the 25th to 75th percentiles of import exposure corresponds to a 7.8% increase in the morbidity of poor mental health, adding about 3 days of poor mental health per year for the average adult. Concurrently, the ability to afford health care decreases. Our results complement documented consequences of import competition on labor markets and temporary business cycle shocks on health outcomes.	Matthew Lang, T. Clay McManus, Georg Schaur
10	1997	The Effect of Immigrants on the Employment and Wages of Native Workers: Evidence from the 1970s and 1980s [Title only] This title explicitly references the core empirical question of immigration effects on native labor markets, which is the primary application area for the Card (2001) shift-share design. The focus on the 1970s and 1980s aligns with the historical periods often analyzed in this literature using enclave or shift-share instruments to identify causal impacts. No abstract available.	Robert F. Schoeni
10	2018	Shift-Share Designs: Theory and Inference ↗ This paper directly addresses the methodological axis of the project by developing novel inference methods for shift-share designs that correct for overrejection caused by cross-regional correlation in residuals. It provides essential diagnostic tools and valid standard errors for the Bartik instrument, which is central to the researcher's focus on shares-based versus shifts-based identification frameworks and their practical diagnostics. We study inference in shift-share regression designs, such as when a regional outcome is regressed on a weighted average of observed sectoral shocks, using regional sector shares as weights. We conduct a placebo exercise in which we estimate the effect of a shift-share regressor constructed with randomly generated sectoral shocks on actual labor market outcomes across U.S. Commuting Zones. Tests based on commonly used standard errors with 5% nominal significance level reject the null of no effect in up to 55% of the placebo samples. We use a stylized economic model to show that this overrejection problem arises because regression residuals are correlated across regions with similar sectoral...	Rodrigo Adão, Michal Kolesár, Eduardo Morales
10	2024	A Practical Guide to Shift-Share Instruments ↗ This paper directly addresses the methodological core of the project by outlining the two competing identification frameworks for shift-share instruments. It provides the practical diagnostics and theoretical distinctions essential for the project's analysis of shares-based versus shifts-based approaches. A recent econometric literature shows two distinct paths for identification with shift-share instruments, leveraging either many exogenous shifts or exogenous shares. We present the core logic of both paths and practical takeaways via simple checklists. A variety of empirical settings illustrate key points.	Kirill Borusyak, Peter Hull, Xavier Jaravel
10	2024	Design-based identification with formula instruments: a review ↗ This paper directly reviews the econometric foundations of shift-share instruments, aligning perfectly with the project's methodological axis on identification frameworks. It explicitly addresses the design-based approach for formula instruments, which is central to the Bartik IV design discussed in the project description. Summary Many studies in economics use instruments or treatments that combine a set of exogenous shocks with other predetermined variables via a known formula. Examples include shift-share instruments and measures of social or spatial spillovers. We review recent econometric tools for this setting, which leverage the assignment process of the exogenous shocks and the structure of the formula for identification. We compare this design-based approach with conventional estimation strategies based on conditional unconfoundedness, and contrast it with alternative strategies that leverage a model for unobservables.	Kirill Borusyak, Peter Hull, Xavier Jaravel
10	2024	Labour market impacts of the China shock: Why the tide of Globalisation did not lift all boats ↗ This paper is a foundational review of the China shock literature, directly addressing the project's core empirical application of shift-share instruments in measuring local labor market impacts of trade exposure. It comprehensively covers the key outcomes, distributional consequences, and policy implications central to the research project's focus on Autor, Dorn, and Hanson-style analyses. The 1990s and 2000s saw a dramatic expansion in global goods trade. China rapidly emerged as the world’s leading exporter while manufacturing employment in many high-income countries plummeted. Guided by textbook models that assumed frictionless labour markets and balanced trade, economists long maintained the view that trade had only modest labour market impacts and was not an important contributor to rising inequalities in high-income countries. We review recent evidence on the impacts of rapidly rising import competition from China on a broad range of outcomes in high-income countries. Import competition led to employment and wage losses that were heavily concentrated among the employees...	David Dorn, Peter Levell
10	2021	Bartik Instruments: An Applied Introduction ↗ This paper serves as a foundational applied guide to Bartik instruments, directly explaining the core design and its purpose in purging confounding local demand variation. It aligns perfectly with the project's focus on the methodology, identification logic, and broad applicability of shift-share IVs in empirical economics. This article provides an applied introduction to Bartik instruments. The instruments attempt to reduce familiar endogeneity concerns in differential exposure designs (e.g., panel regressions with unit and time fixed effects). They isolate treatment variation due to the differential impact of common shocks on units with distinct pre-determined exposures. As a result, the instruments purge the treatment variation of possibly confounding factors varying across units over time. Given their broad applicability, Bartik instruments promise to provide researchers with a versatile new tool in their empirical toolbox to investigate relevant accounting questions.	Matthias Breuer
10	2021	The Unequal Effects of Trade and Automation across Local Labor Markets ↗ This paper directly addresses the core themes of the project by jointly analyzing the China trade shock and automation using the shift-share design across local labor markets. It provides essential empirical evidence and theoretical modeling on how these two distinct shift-share instruments interact, serving as a key application of the task-based model and addressing the distinction between partial and general equilibrium effects. We quantify the joint impact of the China shock and automation of labor, across US commuting zones (CZs). To this end, we employ a multi-sector gravity model of trade with Roy-Frechet worker heterogeneity across sectors, where labor input can be automated. Automation and increased import competition from China are both sector-specific; they lead to contractions in a sector's labor demand and a decline in relative income for CZs more specialized in that sector, amplified by a voluntary reduction in hours worked and an increase in frictional unemployment. The estimated model fits well with the aggregate performance of the manufacturing subsectors and with the variation across CZs in changes...	Simon Galle, Linnea Lorentzen
10	2015	CHINESE IMPORTS COMPETITION’S IMPACT ON EMPLOYMENT AND THE WAGE DISTRIBUTION: EVIDENCE FROM FRENCH LOCAL LABOR MARKETS This paper applies the shift-share instrumental variable design to analyze the labor market impacts of the China shock in France, directly aligning with the core trade shock applications of the project. It provides essential empirical evidence on how import competition affects employment and wage distribution, addressing key themes in the literature on local labor market responses to global trade exposures. If cited or quoted, reference should be made to the full name of the author(s), editor(s), the title, the	Clément Malgouyres
10	2019	Replication Data for: 'Shift-Share Designs: Theory and Inference' ↗ This replication package directly supports the methodological axis of the project by providing the tools to implement Adão et al.'s standard errors and diagnostics for shift-share designs. It is essential for researchers applying the theoretical framework of Bartik instruments discussed in the project description. The data and programs replicate tables and figures from "Shift-Share Designs: Theory and Inference", by Adao, Kolesar, and Morales. Please see the Roadmap files for additional details.	Rodrigo Adão, Michal Kolesár, Eduardo Morales
10	2025	Assessing early labour market effects of generative AI: evidence from population data ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis of the project by applying occupation-level task-exposure measures to generative AI, a specific form of technology shock central to the shift-share design. It provides empirical evidence on how AI impacts labor market outcomes, aligning with the project's focus on automation and the task-based model. Publisher Copyright: © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.	Antti Kauhanen, Petri Rouvinen
10	2024	Shift-Share Design Under Imperfect Substitution ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis of the project by providing a general equilibrium model that bridges the gap between local partial-equilibrium shift-share estimates and aggregate effects. It specifically tackles the critical concern of imperfect substitution across skills, offering a refined methodological framework for interpreting Bartik instruments in the context of major empirical applications like the China shock. This paper proposes an approach to estimate the local effects of aggregate industry-level shocks while accounting for general equilibrium adjustments arising from imperfect substitution across skills. Using a general equilibrium model, I derive a shift-share reduced-form representation of local labor market outcomes that depends not only on regional-level shock exposure, as is commonly used, but also on an indirect channel that depends on regions' group-level exposure, the cost-share matrix, and skill composition. Applying this approach to two empirical contexts--- the China shock and the Great Recession--- I find that the proposed mechanisms help reconcile some of the divergent conclusions...	Chen Liu
10	2019	ShiftShareSE: Inference in Regressions with Shift-Share Structure ↗ This paper directly addresses the methodological axis of the project by providing inference tools for shift-share instruments, specifically implementing the Adão et al. standard errors mentioned in the scope. It is a core methodological reference for conducting valid statistical tests in the Bartik IV design. Provides confidence intervals in least-squares regressions when the variable of interest has a shift-share structure, and in instrumental variables regressions when the instrument has a shift-share structure. The confidence intervals implement the AKM and AKM0 methods developed in Adão, Kolesár, and Morales (2019) <<a href="https://doi.org/10.1093%2Fqje%2Fqjz025" target="_top">doi:10.1093/qje/qjz025</a>>.	Michal Kolesár
10	2026	Robots and Workers ↗ [Title only] The title directly references the two central variables of the automation literature, strongly suggesting a paper analyzing the impact of robot adoption on labor markets, which is a core application of the shift-share IV design. This aligns perfectly with the Acemoglu & Restrepo (2020) framework and the theoretical task-based models described in the project overview. No abstract available.	Daron Acemoğlu, Hans Koster, Ceren Özgen
10	2024	Overidentification in Shift-Share Designs ↗ This paper directly addresses the methodological axis of the project by analyzing the testability of identification restrictions in shift-share (Bartik) instrumental variable designs. It provides key diagnostics, such as overidentification tests, for the competing shares-based and shifts-based frameworks, using the China shock literature as a primary empirical example. This paper studies the testability of identifying restrictions commonly employed to assign a causal interpretation to two stage least squares (TSLS) estimators based on Bartik instruments. For homogeneous effects models applied to short panels, our analysis yields testable implications previously noted in the literature for the two major available identification strategies. We propose overidentification tests for these restrictions that remain valid in high dimensional regimes and are robust to heteroskedasticity and clustering. We further show that homogeneous effect models in short panels, and their corresponding overidentification tests, are of central importance by establishing that...	Jinyong Hahn, Guido Kuersteiner, Andres Santos, et al.
10	2024	A Practical Guide to Shift-Share Instruments ↗ This paper directly addresses the project's core methodological axis by explaining the two competing identification frameworks for shift-share instruments. It provides the essential practical takeaways and diagnostic checklists required for implementing the shares-based versus shifts-based approaches central to the researcher's study. A recent econometric literature shows two distinct paths for identification with shift-share instruments, leveraging either many exogenous shifts or exogenous shares. We present the core logic of both paths and practical takeaways via simple checklists. A variety of empirical settings illustrate key points.	Kirill Borusyak, Peter Hull, Xavier Jaravel
10	2021	China Import Penetration and U.S. Labor-Market Adjustments This paper is a core contribution to the China shock literature, directly analyzing the labor market effects of import competition from China on specific demographic groups. It applies the shift-share methodology framework central to the project to examine distributional impacts within the U.S. manufacturing sector. Acemoglu et al. (2014) explore the contribution of the swift rise of import penetration from China to U.S. employment growth. Using industry-level analysis to compare changes in relative employment among industries with varying levels of trade exposure they find that the increase in U.S. imports from China caused significant reductions in U.S. manufacturing employment. This paper extends their analysis and contributes to the literature by closely examining the impact of the China trade shock on commuting zone Black employment. We find a significant negative impact of the China trade shock on commuting zone Black employment and earnings in industries most exposed to trade. We also find that...	William E. Spriggs, Nyanya Browne, Bethel Cole-Smith
10	2023	How Much Should We Trust Regional-Exposure Designs? ↗ This paper directly critiques the inference methodology of regional-exposure (shift-share) designs, which are central to the researcher's project. It addresses key identification and estimation issues, such as cross-regidual correlations and standard error correction, that are fundamental to the methodological axis of the study. Many prominent studies in macroeconomics, labor, and trade use panel data on regions to identify the local effects of aggregate shocks. These studies construct regional-exposure instruments as an observed aggregate shock times an observed regional exposure to that shock. We argue that the most economically plausible source of identification in these settings is uncorrelatedness of observed and unobserved aggregate shocks. Even when the regression estimator is consistent, we show that inference is complicated by cross-regional residual correlations induced by unobserved aggregate shocks. We suggest two-way clustering, two-way heteroskedasticityand autocorrelation-consistent standard errors...	Jeremy Majerovitz, Karthik Sastry
9	2018	The Race between Man and Machine: Implications of Technology for Growth, Factor Shares, and Employment ↗ This paper establishes the foundational task-based model that underpins the theoretical axis of the research project, specifically regarding automation and its effects on employment and factor shares. It directly informs the structural interpretations of shift-share instruments used in the automation literature and highlights the critical distinction between displacement and productivity effects central to the project's inquiry. We examine the concerns that new technologies will render labor redundant in a framework in which tasks previously performed by labor can be automated and new versions of existing tasks, in which labor has a comparative advantage, can be created. In a static version where capital is fixed and technology is exogenous, automation reduces employment and the labor share, and may even reduce wages, while the creation of new tasks has the opposite effects. Our full model endogenizes capital accumulation and the direction of research toward automation and the creation of new tasks. If the long-run rental rate of capital relative to the wage is sufficiently low, the long-run equilibrium involves...	Daron Acemoğlu, Pascual Restrepo
9	2001	The Skill Content of Recent Technological Change: An Empirical Exploration ↗ This paper establishes the foundational task-based framework that underpins the theoretical axis of the project, specifically linking technology to routine versus non-routine task demands. It provides the essential theoretical justification for occupation-level shift-share instruments used in the automation and polarization literature discussed in the research scope. We apply an understanding of what computers do-the execution of procedural or rules-based logic-to study how computer technology alters job skill demands. We contend that computer capital (1) substitutes for workers in carrying out a limited and well-defined set of cognitive and manual activities, those that can be accomplished by following explicit rules (what we term "routine tasks"); and (2) complements workers in accomplishing non-routine problem solving and communications tasks. Provided these tasks are imperfect substitutes, our model implies measurable changes in the content of work, which we explore using representative data on job task input over the period 1960 to 1998. We show...	David Autor, Frank S. Levy, Richard J. Murnane
9	2020	Importing Political Polarization? The Electoral Consequences of Rising Trade Exposure ↗ This paper directly addresses the empirical applications axis of the project by investigating the political polarization consequences of the 'China shock,' a primary trade shock case study in the Bartik literature. It utilizes the standard shift-share methodology to isolate the exogenous component of import competition, thereby linking local labor market exposure to electoral outcomes, which is a core theme of the research project. Has rising import competition contributed to the polarization of US politics? Analyzing multiple measures of political expression and results of congressional and presidential elections spanning the period 2000 through 2016, we find strong though not definitive evidence of an ideological realignment in trade-exposed local labor markets that commences prior to the divisive 2016 US presidential election. Exploiting the exogenous component of rising import competition by China, we find that trade exposed electoral districts simultaneously exhibit growing ideological polarization in some domains, meaning expanding support for both strong-left and strong-right views, and pure rightward shifts in...	David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon Hanson, et al.
9	2004	The New Division of Labor ↗ This book is a foundational text for the theoretical axis of the project, as it introduces the task-based framework distinguishing routine from non-routine tasks that underpins modern shift-share designs in automation literature. Its concepts directly inspired subsequent empirical work, such as Autor, Levy, and Murnane (2003), which provides the occupation-level exposure indices central to the researcher's methodological and theoretical inquiries. As the current recession ends, many workers will not be returning to the jobs they once held--those jobs are gone. In The New Division of Labor , Frank Levy and Richard Murnane show how computers are changing the employment landscape and how the right kinds of education can ease the transition to the new job market. The book tells stories of people at work--a high-end financial advisor, a customer service representative, a pair of successful chefs, a cardiologist, an automotive mechanic, the author Victor Hugo, floor traders in a London financial exchange. The authors merge these stories with insights from cognitive science, computer science, and economics to show how computers are...	Frank Levy, Richard J. Murnane
9	2012	The Effect of Immigration along the Distribution of Wages ↗ This paper is a foundational study in the immigration shift-share literature, directly analyzing the effects of immigration on native wages across the entire distribution. It complements the project's focus by providing empirical evidence on the heterogeneity of wage impacts, which is crucial for understanding the distributional consequences of the labor supply shocks identified by shift-share instruments. This paper analyses the effect immigration has on the wages of native workers. Unlike most previous work, we estimate wage effects along the distribution of native wages. We derive a flexible empirical strategy that does not rely on pre-allocating immigrants to particular skill groups. In our empirical analysis, we demonstrate that immigrants downgrade considerably upon arrival. As for the effects on native wages, we find a pattern of effects whereby immigration depresses wages below the 20th percentile of the wage distribution but leads to slight wage increases in the upper part of the wage distribution. This pattern mirrors the evidence on the location of immigrants in the wage...	Christian Dustmann, Tommaso Frattini, I. P. Preston
9	2018	Global Competition and Brexit ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share instrumental variable design using China import exposure to estimate local labor market effects, aligning perfectly with the 'China shock' literature. It addresses the political polarization outcome and methodological rigor central to the project's empirical applications axis. We show that support for the Leave option in the Brexit referendum was systematically higher in regions hit harder by economic globalization. We focus on the shock of surging imports from China over the past three decades as a structural driver of divergence in economic performance across U.K. regions. An IV approach supports a causal interpretation of our finding. We claim that the effect is driven by the displacement determined by globalization in the absence of effective compensation of its losers. Neither overall stocks nor inflows of immigrants in a region are associated with higher support for the Leave option. A positive association only emerges when focusing on immigrants from EU...	Italo Colantone, Piero Stanig
9	2010	Factor Immobility and Regional Impacts of Trade Liberalization: Evidence on Poverty from India ↗ This paper applies a shift-share design using district-level sectoral composition as weights and trade liberalization intensity as shifts to estimate the local impacts of trade exposure on poverty. It directly aligns with the China shock literature's core methodology and theoretical focus on factor immobility and regional heterogeneity in labor market adjustments. This paper uses the 1991 Indian trade liberalization to measure the impact of trade liberalization on poverty, and to examine the mechanisms underpinning this impact. Variation in sectoral composition across districts and liberalization intensity across production sectors allows a difference-in-difference approach. Rural districts, in which production sectors more exposed to liberalization were concentrated, experienced slower decline in poverty and lower consumption growth. The impact of liberalization was most pronounced among the least geographically mobile at the bottom of the income distribution, and in Indian states where inflexible labor laws impeded factor reallocation across...	Petia Topalova
9	2019	Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and Work ↗ This paper articulates the fundamental task-based framework that underpins the theoretical foundation of the project, particularly linking automation to occupation-level exposure indices and Bartik-style measures. It provides the essential structural context for understanding the displacement and productivity effects central to the automation literature reviewed in the project. We summarize a framework for the study of the implications of automation and AI on the demand for labor, wages, and employment.Our task-based framework emphasizes the displacement effect that automation creates as machines and AI replace labor in tasks that it used to perform.This displacement effect tends to reduce the demand for labor and wages.But it is counteracted by a productivity effect, resulting from the cost savings generated by automation, which increase the demand for labor in non-automated tasks.The productivity effect is complemented by additional capital accumulation and the deepening of automation (improvements of existing machinery), both of which further increase the...	Daron Acemoğlu, Pascual Restrepo
9	1999	Understanding the Effects of a Shock to Government Purchases ↗ [Title only] This title closely aligns with the Nakamura & Steinsson (2014) application of shift-share designs to estimate fiscal multipliers using regional military spending shocks. It directly addresses the project's empirical focus on government spending instruments and the distinction between local and aggregate effects. No abstract available.	Wendy Edelberg, Martin Eichenbaum, Jonas D. M. Fisher
9	2020	Trade Liberalization and Mortality: Evidence from US Counties ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share research design to study the health impacts of the China shock, a core empirical application of the project's scope. It investigates mortality outcomes linked to trade exposure, which aligns perfectly with the project's focus on the labor market and societal effects of import competition shocks. We investigate the impact of a large and persistent economic shock on “deaths of despair.” We find that areas more exposed to a plausibly exogenous change in international trade policy exhibit relative increases in fatal drug overdoses, specifically among whites. We show that these results are not driven by pre-existing trends in mortality rates, that the estimated relationships are robust to controls for state-level legislation pertaining to opioid availability and health care, and that the impact of the policy change on mortality coincides with a deterioration in labor market conditions and uptake of disability insurance. (JEL F13, F16, I12, R12)	Justin R. Pierce, Peter K. Schott
9	2013	The “task approach” to labor markets: an overview ↗ This paper provides a foundational overview of the task-based approach, which serves as the primary theoretical underpinning for the occupation-level shift-share designs discussed in the project. It directly addresses the core mechanisms of how technology and trade shocks differentially affect task content, thereby linking the theoretical axis of the research to empirical applications like employment polarization. An emerging literature argues that changes in the allocation of workplace “tasks” between capital and labor, and between domestic and foreign workers, has altered the structure of labor demand in industrialized countries and fostered employment polarization—that is, rising employment in the highest and lowest paid occupations. Analyzing this phenomenon within the canonical production function framework is challenging, however, because the assignment of tasks to labor and capital in the canonical model is essentially static. This essay sketches an alternative model of the assignment of skills to tasks based upon comparative advantage, reviews key conceptual and practical challenges that...	David Autor
9	1989	Labor Market Adjustments to Increased Immigration [Title only] The title directly references immigration, a core application of shift-share designs such as Card's enclave instrument. It likely addresses the native labor market effects that this methodological framework is specifically designed to identify. No abstract available.	Robert Lalonde, Robert Topel
9	2018	Low-Skill and High-Skill Automation ↗ This paper is directly relevant as it establishes the theoretical task-based framework that underpins the occupational exposure indices and shift-share designs discussed in the project. It specifically addresses the core mechanism of how technology shocks affect different skill groups, which is central to the automation literature and the distinction between local and aggregate effects. We present a task-based model in which high- and low-skill workers compete against machines in the production of tasks. Low-skill (high-skill) automation corresponds to tasks performed by low-skill (high-skill) labor being taken over by capital. Automation displaces the type of labor it directly affects, depressing its wage. Through ripple effects, automation also affects the real wage of other workers. Counteracting these forces, automation creates a positive productivity effect, pushing up the price of all factors. Because capital adjusts to keep the interest rate constant, the productivity effect dominates in the long run. Finally, low-skill (high-skill) automation increases (reduces)...	Daron Acemoğlu, Pascual Restrepo
9	2020	Importing Political Polarization? The Electoral Consequences of Rising Trade Exposure ↗ This paper directly addresses the China shock literature by employing shift-share instrumentation to estimate the causal effects of import competition on local political outcomes. It fits squarely within the project's empirical applications axis, specifically focusing on the downstream socio-political consequences of trade exposure identified by the Bartik design. Has rising import competition contributed to the polarization of US politics? Analyzing multiple measures of political expression and results of congressional and presidential elections spanning the period 2000 through 2016, we find strong though not definitive evidence of an ideological realignment in trade-exposed local labor markets that commences prior to the divisive 2016 US presidential election. Exploiting the exogenous component of rising import competition by China, we find that trade exposed electoral districts simultaneously exhibit growing ideological polarization in some domains, meaning expanding support for both strong-left and strong-right views, and pure rightward shifts in...	David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon Hanson, et al.
9	2015	Immigrants Equilibrate Local Labor Markets: Evidence from the Great Recession ↗ This paper directly addresses the immigration application axis by examining how immigrant mobility influences local labor market outcomes, a key mechanism underlying the exclusion restriction and general equilibrium considerations in shift-share designs. It provides critical evidence on the differential geographic responses of natives versus immigrants, which is central to evaluating the validity of instruments like Card's enclave instrument and the broader interpretation of shift-share results in the context of local demand shocks. This paper demonstrates that low-skilled Mexican-born immigrants' location choices in the U.S. respond strongly to changes in local labor demand, and that this geographic elasticity helps equalize spatial differences in labor market outcomes for low-skilled native workers, who are much less responsive. We leverage the substantial geographic variation in employment losses that occurred during Great Recession, and our results confirm the standard finding that high-skilled populations are quite geographically responsive to employment opportunities while low-skilled populations are much less so. However, low-skilled immigrants, especially those from Mexico, respond even more strongly than...	Brian C. Cadena, Brian K. Kovak
9	2016	Winners and losers from a commodities-for-manufactures trade boom ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share design to analyze local labor market effects of trade shocks, specifically examining the 'losers' from import competition and 'winners' from export demand, which is central to the project's trade shock axis. It provides empirical evidence on how local industry composition and national/foreign growth rates interact to determine wage outcomes, a key mechanism in the China shock literature discussed in the project description. A recent boom in commodities-for-manufactures trade between China and other developing countries has led to much concern about the losers from rising import competition in manufacturing, but little attention on the winners from growing Chinese demand for commodities. Using census data for Brazil, we find that local labour markets more affected by Chinese import competition experienced slower growth in manufacturing wages between 2000 and 2010. However, we observe faster wage growth in locations benefiting from rising Chinese commodity demand during the same period.	Francisco Costa, Jason Garred, João Paulo Pessoa
9	2010	Attenuation Bias in Measuring the Wage Impact of Immigration ↗ This paper directly addresses the measurement error inherent in the immigrant share instrument, which is a central component of the immigration shift-share design discussed in the project. It provides critical methodological context for understanding attenuation bias and the validity of estimating local labor market effects using share-based instruments. Although economic theory predicts an inverse relation between relativewages and immigration-induced supply shifts, it has been difficultto document such effects. The weak evidence may be partly due to samplingerror in a commonly used measure of the supply shift, the immigrantshare of the workforce. After controlling for permanent factors thatdetermine wages in specific labor markets, little variation remainsin the immigrant share. We find significant sampling error in thismeasure of supply shifts in Canadian and U.S. census data. Correctingfor the resulting attenuation bias can substantially increase existingestimates of the wage impact of immigration. (c) 2011 by The University of Chicago...	Abdurrahman Aydemir, George J. Borjas
9	2014	Made in China, sold in Norway: Local labor market effects of an import shock ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share design to analyze the local labor market effects of the 'China shock,' mirroring the core empirical framework of the ADH (2013) literature. It provides crucial cross-country comparative evidence on how institutional differences, such as centralized wage bargaining, moderate the partial-equilibrium impacts identified by the Bartik instrument. We analyze whether regional labor markets are affected by exposure to import competition from China. We find negative employment effects for low-skilled workers, and observe that low-skilled workers tend to be pushed into unemployment or leave the labor force altogether. We find no evidence of wage effects. We partly expect this in a Nordic welfare state where firms are flexible at the employment margin, while centralized wage bargaining provides less flexibility at the wage margin. Our estimates suggest that import competition from China explains almost 10% of the reduction in the manufacturing employment share from 1996 to 2007 which is half of the effect found by Autor, Dorn and Hanson...	Ragnhild Balsvik, Sissel Jensen, Kjell G. Salvanes
9	2012	Trade as an engine of creative destruction: Mexican experience with Chinese competition ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share Bartik framework to analyze the 'China shock' within an international context, specifically examining how competition from Chinese imports drives firm-level creative destruction in Mexico. It aligns with the core empirical applications axis by investigating the heterogeneous effects of trade exposure on firm selection, reallocation, and productivity, mirroring the mechanisms studied in the seminal local labor market literature. This paper exploits the surge in Chinese exports from 1994 to 2004 to evaluate the effects of a competition shock from a low wage competitor for producers in an important middle-income country, Mexico. We find that this shock causes selection and reallocation at both firm and product levels and that its impact is highly heterogeneous at the intensive and extensive margins. Sales of smaller plants and more marginal products are compressed and are more likely to cease, whereas those of larger plants and core products seem relatively impervious to the shock. This implies a reallocation in terms of market shares within firms and between firms. We also show that the impact of expanded access to...	Leonardo Iacovone, Ferdinand Rauch, L. Alan Winters
9	2023	How will Language Modelers like ChatGPT Affect Occupations and Industries? ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis of the project by constructing an AI task-exposure measure for language models, a specific extension of the occupation-level shift-share designs discussed in the prompt. It provides a methodological example of how new technological shocks can be mapped to labor market exposure indices, aligning with the project's interest in measuring technology-induced changes in task content. Recent dramatic increases in AI language modeling capabilities has led to many questions about the effect of these technologies on the economy. In this paper we present a methodology to systematically assess the extent to which occupations, industries and geographies are exposed to advances in AI language modeling capabilities. We find that the top occupations exposed to language modeling include telemarketers and a variety of post-secondary teachers such as English language and literature, foreign language and literature, and history teachers. We find the top industries exposed to advances in language modeling are legal services and securities, commodities, and investments. We also find a...	Edward W. Felten, Manav Raj, Robert Seamans
9	2020	Threats and opportunities in the digital era: Automation spikes and employment dynamics ↗ This paper is a core contribution to the automation literature, directly addressing the empirical identification of robot adoption effects on employment dynamics using import-based exposure measures. It aligns with the project's focus on the Acemoglu & Restrepo framework by providing detailed within-firm evidence on hiring and separation rates in response to automation-intensive investment. This paper investigates the change in worker flows (i.e. net growth, but also hiring and separation rates) around an investment in automation-intensive goods and, within firms, across occupational categories. Resorting to an integrated dataset encompassing detailed information on firms, their imports, and employer-employee data for French manufacturing employers over the period 2002–2015, we identify ‘automation spikes’ using imports of capital goods embedding automation technologies. Even after controlling for firms’ non-random selection into automation, we find that automation spikes are linked to an increase in firms’ contemporaneous net employment growth rate, jointly explained by a...	Giacomo Domini, Marco Grazzi, Daniele Moschella, et al.
9	2019	Globalization and electoral outcomes: Evidence from Italy ↗ This paper directly applies the China shock and immigration shift-share instruments to analyze political polarization, a core empirical application of the researcher's project. It provides relevant evidence on the political consequences of the specific labor market exposures (import competition and immigration) that are central to the Bartik IV literature. Abstract We study whether and to what extent the electoral dynamics in Italy over the 1994–2008 period can be explained by the development of economic factors associated with globalization. To measure the level of exposure to globalization for local labor markets, our main unit of analysis, we use the intensity of import competition from China and the presence of immigrants. Looking at parties’ political positions and employing an estimation strategy that accounts for endogeneity and time‐invariant unobserved effects across local labor markets, we find that both immigration intensity and exposure to import competition from China have contributed positively to the electoral outcomes of...	Mauro Caselli, Andrea Fracasso, Silvio Traverso
9	2010	How do very open economies adjust to large immigration flows? Evidence from Spanish regions ↗ This paper is a direct empirical application of the shift-share instrumental variable design in the context of immigration, a core domain of the project. It utilizes historical settlement patterns as shares to construct an instrument for immigrant inflows, allowing the researcher to analyze labor market absorption mechanisms similar to those studied in the Card (2001) enclave instrument literature. In recent years, Spain has received unprecedented immigration flows. Between 2001 and 2006 the fraction of the population born abroad more than doubled, increasing from 4.8% to 10.8%. For Spanish provinces with above-median inflows (relative to population), immigration increased by 24% the number of high school dropouts while only increasing college graduates by 11%. We study different channels by which regional labor markets have absorbed the large increase in relative supply of low educated workers. We identify the exogenous supply shock using historical immigrant settlement patterns by country of origin. Using data from the Labor Force Survey and the decennial Census, we find a large...	Libertad González, Francesc Ortega
9	2021	Benign Effects of Automation: New Evidence from Patent Texts ↗ This paper directly addresses the project's empirical application axis by examining automation/robots and its labor market effects using an instrumental variable strategy. It aligns with the theoretical axis by proposing a novel patent-text-overlap exposure measure, which is explicitly listed as a key occupation-level shift-share design in the project description. Abstract We provide a new measure of automation based on patents and study its employment effects. Classifying all U.S. patents granted between 1976 and 2014 as automation or nonautomation patents, we document a strong rise in the number and share of automation patents. We link patents to their industries of use and to commuting zones. To estimate the effect of automation, we use an instrumental variables strategy that relies on innovations developed independently from U.S. labor market trends. We find that automation technology has a positive effect on employment in local labor markets, driven by job growth in the service sector.	Katja Mann, Lukas Püttmann
9	2019	China's “Great Migration”: The impact of the reduction in trade policy uncertainty ↗ This paper directly employs a Bartik shift-share instrument to analyze the labor market effects of trade policy uncertainty, fitting the project's core methodological and empirical axes. It applies the shift-share framework to internal migration dynamics triggered by trade shocks, providing relevant context for understanding how trade exposure influences local labor supply and demand within a major exporting economy. We analyze the effect of China's integration into the world economy on workers in the country and show that one important channel of impact has been internal migration. Specifically, we study the changes in internal migration rates triggered by the reduction in trade policy uncertainty faced by Chinese exporters in the U.S. This reduction is characterized by plausibly exogenous variation across sectors, which we use to construct a local measure of treatment, at the level of a Chinese prefecture, following Bartik (1991). This allows us to estimate a difference-in-difference empirical specification based on variation across Chinese prefectures before and after 2001. We find that prefectures...	Giovanni Facchini, Maggie Y. Liu, Anna Maria Mayda, et al.
9	2015	Robots at Work ↗ This paper is a foundational study in the automation literature, directly examining the economic effects of industrial robots on productivity and wages using an instrument based on task replaceability. It establishes the empirical groundwork for the shift-share design applications discussed in the project, particularly regarding the task-based model and labor market impacts. Despite ubiquitous discussions of robots' potential impact, there is almost no systematic empirical evidence on their economic effects. In this paper we analyze for the first time the economic impact of industrial robots, using new data on a panel of industries in 17 countries from 1993-2007.We find that industrial robots increased both labor productivity and value added. Our panel identification is robust to numerous controls, and we find similar results instrumenting increased robot use with a measure of workers' replaceability by robots, which is based on the tasks prevalent in industries before robots were widely employed. We calculate that the increased use of robots raised countries'...	Georg Graetz, Guy Michaels
9	2015	The Wage Impact of the Marielitos: A Reappraisal ↗ This paper is a foundational study in the immigration shift-share literature, directly addressing the empirical applications axis by analyzing the local labor market effects of the Mariel boatlift using Card's (1990) natural experiment framework. It provides critical insights into the identification strategies and results related to immigration shocks, which are central to the project's discussion of shift-share instruments like the enclave instrument. This paper brings a new perspective to the analysis of the Mariel supply shock, revisiting the question armed with the accumulated insights from the literature on the economic impact of immigration. A crucial lesson from that literature is that any credible attempt to measure the wage impact must carefully match the skills of the immigrants with those of the pre-existing workers. At least 60 percent of the Marielitos were high school dropouts. A reappraisal of the Mariel evidence, specifically examining wages in this low-skill group, overturns the finding that Mariel did not affect Miami's wage structure. The wage of high school dropouts in Miami dropped dramatically, by 10 to 30 percent...	George J. Borjas
9	2021	Individual vulnerability to industrial robot adoption increases support for the radical right ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) framework to study the labor market effects of industrial robot adoption, a core empirical application of the project. It further extends this by linking the resulting individual-level exposure indices to political outcomes, addressing the project's interest in the broader societal impacts of automation shocks. The increasing success of populist and radical-right parties is one of the most remarkable developments in the politics of advanced democracies. We investigate the impact of industrial robot adoption on individual voting behavior in 13 western European countries between 1999 and 2015. We argue for the importance of the distributional consequences triggered by automation, which generates winners and losers also within a given geographic area. Analysis that exploits only cross-regional variation in the incidence of robot adoption might miss important facets of this process. In fact, patterns in individual indicators of economic distress and political dissatisfaction are masked in...	Massimo Anelli, Italo Colantone, Piero Stanig
9	2017	Slicing the Pie: Quantifying the Aggregate and Distributional Effects of Trade ↗ This paper directly addresses the China shock literature by utilizing the structural relationship between trade-induced labor market changes and welfare outcomes, a core empirical context of the project. It explicitly tackles the unifying concern of distinguishing local partial-equilibrium effects from aggregate and distributional general-equilibrium welfare implications, which is central to the project's theoretical axis. We develop a multi-sector gravity model with heterogeneous workers to quantify the aggregate and group-level welfare effects of trade. We estimate the model using the structural relationship between China-shock driven changes in manufacturing employment and average earnings across US groups defined by commuting zone and education. We find that the China shock increases average welfare but some groups experience losses as high as five times the average gain. Adjusted for plausible measures of inequality aversion, gains in social welfare are positive and only slightly lower than with the standard aggregation.	Simon Galle, Andrés Rodrı́guez-Clare, Moises Yi
9	2018	The Transformation of Manufacturing and the Decline in U.S. Employment ↗ This paper is a core empirical study within the China shock and manufacturing decline literature, directly addressing local labor market effects of structural shifts in employment. It aligns perfectly with the project's focus on the economic consequences of labor demand shocks, such as impacts on wages, employment, and social outcomes like opioid use. Using data from a variety of sources, this paper comprehensively documents the dramatic changes in the manufacturing sector and the large decline in employment rates and hours worked among prime-aged Americans since 2000. We use cross-region variation to explore the link between declining manufacturing employment and labor market outcomes. We find that manufacturing decline in a local area in the 2000s had large and persistent negative effects on local employment rates, hours worked and wages. We also show that declining local manufacturing employment is related to rising local opioid use and deaths. These results suggest that some of the recent opioid epidemic is driven by demand factors...	Kerwin Kofi Charles, Erik Hurst, Mariel Schwartz
9	2018	Import Competition and Internal Migration ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) instrument to study the effects of the China shock on local labor markets, specifically focusing on internal migration as a key adjustment mechanism. It fits perfectly within the trade shock literature and addresses the distinction between partial-equilibrium labor market outcomes and broader local demographic adjustments, which is central to the project's empirical and theoretical axes. Abstract We examine the U.S. internal migration response to increased import competition following the granting of Permanent Normal Trade Relations to China in 2001. Using a variety of data sets and empirical approaches, we find that local labor markets most exposed to the policy change experienced a relative reduction in population growth over the following decade. The majority of the effect occurs at a lag of seven to ten years and is most pronounced among young individuals and low-education groups. Such population adjustments should influence the interpretation of evidence in the growing literature on import competition and local labor markets.	Andrew Greenland, John Lopresti, Peter McHenry
9	2016	The effects of import competition on worker health ↗ This paper directly applies the Chinese import shock variant of the shift-share instrumental variable design to analyze the local labor market effects on worker health, a core empirical application of the project. It provides key evidence on how exposure to foreign competition impacts workplace injuries and welfare, aligning with the project's focus on the health and political dimensions of trade shocks. Occupational health is an important determinant of workers' welfare. Existing mechanisms and evidence from the international trade and occupational safety literatures combine to predict that import competition impacts work place injuries, especially at small firms that are most affected by foreign imports. We examine this prediction with novel data on injuries at US manufacturers using Chinese import growth in 1996–2007 as a shock to competition. The data show that injury rates in the competing US industries increase over the short to medium run, particularly at smaller establishments. Back-of-the-envelope calculations show that injury risk increases by 13% at the smallest establishments...	T. Clay McManus, Georg Schaur
9	2021	Economic Decline, Social Identity, and Authoritarian Values in the United States ↗ This paper is highly relevant as it directly examines the political polarization consequences of the China shock, a central empirical application of the shift-share design in the researcher's project. It utilizes the specific exposure to import competition from China (often instrumented via Bartik-style methods) to analyze its interaction with demographic conditions and authoritarian values, fitting the core trade shock and political polarization themes. Abstract Why does the contemporary backlash against globalization in the United States have such a substantial authoritarian character? We argue that sustained economic decline has a negative effect on the social identity of historically dominant groups. These losses lead individuals to be more likely to want to enforce social norm conformity—that is, adopt more authoritarian values—as a way to preserve social status and this effect is greater the larger the size of other groups in the population. Central to our account is the expectation of an interactive effect of local economic and demographic conditions in forging value responses to economic decline. The article evaluates this argument...	Cameron Ballard-Rosa, Amalie Jensen, Kenneth F. Scheve
9	2009	The Growth of Low Skill Service Jobs and the Polarization of the U.S. Labor Market ↗ This paper is a cornerstone of the polarization literature, directly establishing the task-based framework that underpins many shift-share instruments in the automation literature. It empirically demonstrates how technological shocks differentially affect routine versus non-routine tasks, providing the foundational evidence for occupation-level exposure indices central to the project's theoretical axis. We offer an integrated explanation and empirical analysis of the polarization of U.S. employment and wages between 1980 and 2005, and the concurrent growth of low skill service occupations. We attribute polarization to the interaction between consumer preferences, which favor variety over specialization, and the falling cost of automating routine, codifiable job tasks. Applying a spatial equilibrium model, we derive, test, and confirm four implications of this hypothesis. Local labor markets that were specialized in routine activities differentially adopted information technology, reallocated low skill labor into service occupations (employment polarization), experienced earnings growth at...	David Autor, David Dorn
9	2023	Occupational Heterogeneity in Exposure to Generative AI ↗ [Title only] This title directly aligns with the theoretical axis regarding LLM task-exposure measures and the occupation-level application of shift-share designs to generative AI. It likely extends the literature on automation exposure (e.g., Webb 2019, Eloundou et al. 2023) by focusing on occupational heterogeneity in AI impact. No abstract available.	Edward W. Felten, Manav Raj, Robert Seamans
9	2019	Who is afraid of machines? ↗ This paper is a core contribution to the automation literature, directly examining the labor market effects of industrial robots and software on worker demand across education and gender groups. It employs a shift-share design using cross-country and industry composition differences to identify the impact of technology shocks, aligning perfectly with the project's focus on robot adoption and task-based models. We study how various types of machines, namely, information and communication technologies, software and especially industrial robots, affect the demand for workers of different education, age and gender. We do so by exploiting differences in the composition of workers across countries, industries and time. Our data set comprises 10 high-income countries and 30 industries, which span roughly their entire economies, with annual observations over the period 1982–2005. The results suggest that software and robots reduced the demand for low- and medium-skill workers, the young and women – especially in manufacturing industries; but raised the demand for high-skill workers, older workers and men...	Sotiris Blanas, Gino Gancia, Sangyoon Lee
9	2023	Generative AI and jobs ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis of the project by constructing an exposure index for Generative AI, extending the task-based shift-share framework to new technological shocks like LLMs. It aligns with the methodological goal of measuring occupation-level exposure and contributes to the ongoing discussion on how technology shocks affect labor markets through task augmentation versus automation. This study assesses the potential global exposure of occupations to Generative AI, particularly GPT-4. It predicts that the overwhelming effect of the technology will be to augment occupations, rather than to automate them. The greatest impact is likely to be in high and upper-middle income countries due to a higher share of employment in clerical occupations. As clerical jobs are an important source of female employment, the effects are highly gendered. Insights from this study underline the need for proactive policies that focus on job quality, ensure fair transitions, and that are based on dialogue and adequate regulation.	Paweł Gmyrek, Janine Berg, David Bescond
9	2015	The effect of Chinese import competition on Mexican local labor markets ↗ This paper directly applies the Bartik instrumental variable design to the 'China shock' literature, a core empirical application of the project. It extends the methodology to developing economies by incorporating trade diversion effects alongside direct import competition, addressing key mechanisms within the trade shocks domain. This paper contributes to the literature of the effect of globalization on labor markets in developing economies by analyzing the Mexican case. I exploit variation across Mexican regions in import exposure stemming from initial differences in industry specialization in order to estimate the effect Chinese competition had on local Mexican labor markets. Also, by taking advantage of the Mexican exports' high dependence on the U.S. market, I estimate the effect that China-caused trade diversion had on Mexican labor markets. I find that the increase in competition decreased the employment share in manufacturing for the average Mexican local labor market. This effect was found to be larger for...	Óscar Javier Montiel Méndez
9	2019	General Equilibrium Effects in Space: Theory and Measurement ↗ This paper directly addresses the project's central concern regarding the distinction between local partial-equilibrium shift-share estimates and aggregate general-equilibrium effects, specifically in the context of the China shock. It extends shift-share methodology to incorporate spatial general equilibrium, providing a structural bridge relevant to the project's theoretical and empirical axes. How do international trade shocks affect spatially connected regional markets? We answer this question by extending shift-share empirical specifications to incorporate general equilibrium effects that arise in spatial models. In partial equilibrium, regional shock exposure has a shiftshare structure: it is the average shock weighted by regional exposure shares in revenue and consumption. General equilibrium responses of employment and wages in each market are the sum, across all regions, of these shift-share measures times bilateral reduced-form elasticities determined by the economy's spatial links. We use this reduced-form representation of the model to efficiently estimate the bilateral...	Rodrigo Adão, Costas Arkolakis, Federico Esposito
9	2017	Local and aggregate fiscal policy multipliers ↗ This paper is directly related to the project as it extends the Nakamura & Steinsson (2014) fiscal policy application, which is a primary empirical example of the shift-share IV design discussed in the project description. It addresses the core theoretical concern regarding the distinction between local partial-equilibrium effects and aggregate general-equilibrium effects by comparing state-level estimates to national multipliers. Using a newly constructed panel of state-level defense contracts, this paper studies the effect of defense spending on the U.S. macroeconomy. Summing observations across states, we estimate aggregate income and employment multipliers. Comparing these to local multipliers estimated with the panel provides evidence that local multiplier estimates may be reliable indicators of fiscal policy's aggregate effects. Furthermore, evidence of small positive spillovers is found. Across several specifications, we estimate income and employment multipliers between zero and 0.5. This result is reconciled with the greater-than-one multipliers found in Nakamura and Steinsson (2014) by analyzing the Korean...	Bill Dupor, Rodrigo Guerrero
9	2022	On the Persistence of the China Shock ↗ This paper directly addresses the core 'China shock' empirical application using the shift-share Bartik instrument design, extending the analysis to examine the long-term persistence of labor market effects. It provides crucial evidence on adjustment mechanisms and duration that complements the project's focus on local partial-equilibrium effects and the distinction between trade exposure and broader economic outcomes. We evaluate the duration of the China trade shock and its impact on a wide range of outcomes over the period from 2000 to 2019.The shock plateaued in 2010, enabling analysis of its effects for nearly a decade past its culmination.Adverse impacts of import competition on manufacturing employment, overall employment-population ratios, and income per capita in more trade-exposed US commuting zones are present out to 2019.Over the full study period, greater import competition implies a reduction in the manufacturing employment-population ratio of 1.54 percentage points, which is 55 percent of the observed change in the value, and the absorption of 86 percent of this net job loss via a...	David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon Hanson
9	2016	Global Competition and Brexit ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) instrumental variable design using China import shocks to analyze local labor market effects, which is a core component of the project's trade shock literature. It further extends the empirical scope by linking these economic exposure instruments to political polarization, a key topic mentioned in the project description. Using disaggregated referendum returns and individual-level data, we show that support for the Leave option in the referendum regarding European Union membership of the United Kingdom was systematically higher in regions hit harder by economic globalization. We focus on the shock of surging imports from China over the past three decades. An instrumental variables approach supports a causal interpretation. We claim that this effect is driven by the displacement determined by globalization in the absence of effective compensation of its losers. On the other hand, neither stocks nor inflows of immigrants in a region are associated with support for the Leave option. The analysis of individual...	Italo Colantone, Piero Stanig
9	2020	The Health Toll of Import Competition ↗ This paper is a core contribution to the China shock literature, directly analyzing the local labor market and health consequences of import competition using shift-share-style exposure mechanisms. It extends the standard empirical framework by documenting significant persistence and negative health outcomes, which are key applications of the project's focus on the broader impacts of trade shocks. Abstract This paper assesses the effect of import competition on the labour market and health outcomes of US workers. We first show that import shocks affect employment and income, but only in areas where jobs are more intense in routine tasks. Exploiting over 40 million individual observations on health and mortality, we find that import had a detrimental effect on physical and mental health that is concentrated in those areas and exhibits strong persistence. It decreased healthcare utilisation and increased hospitalisation for a large set of conditions, more difficult to treat. The mortality hazard of workers in manufacturing increased by up to 6% per billion-dollar import increase.	Jérôme Adda, Yarine Fawaz
9	2022	Did trade liberalization with China influence US elections? ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) design to measure local exposure to China trade shocks, a central element of the project's trade axis. It investigates the political polarization consequences of these shocks, aligning with the project's focus on the broader socio-economic impacts of import competition. We examine election voting and legislators ’ roll-call votes in the United States over a twenty- ﬁ ve year period. Voters in areas more exposed to trade liberalization with China in 2000 sub-sequently shift their support toward Democrats, relative to the 1990s, though this boost for Democrats wanes after the rise of the Tea Party in 2010. House members ’ votes in Congress rationalize these trends, with Democratic representatives disproportionately supporting protec- tion during the early 2000s. Together, these results imply that voters in areas subject to higher import competition shifted votes toward the party more likely to restrict trade. Published by Elsevier B.V. with China and...	Yi Che, Yi Lu, Justin R. Pierce, et al.
9	2020	Robots and industrial labor: Evidence from Japan ↗ This paper is a direct empirical application of the robot adoption literature, explicitly building on the Acemoglu and Restrepo (2017) structural model which is central to the project's automation axis. It provides key cross-country evidence on the displacement, productivity, and general equilibrium effects of robot adoption, addressing the project's unifying concern regarding partial versus general equilibrium outcomes. This paper provides one of the first studies of the impact of the introduction of robots to equilibrium labor demand in an entire economy. We use long-term (1979–2012) industry-level panel data from Japan, a country that is over 10 times as intensive in the use of robots as in the U.S. Our model, which is derived from Acemoglu and Restrepo (2017), shows that there are three effects on labor demand in the aggregate economy from the introduction of industrial robots. The first is the negative displacement effect of robots taking over the tasks of humans. The second is the positive industry productivity effect of robots lowering costs in a particular industry. This lowering of costs draws...	Robert Dekle
9	2010	Looking for Local Labor Market Effects of NAFTA ↗ This paper is a foundational study in the China shock and trade exposure literature, employing the exact shift-share instrument design central to the project to identify local labor market effects of trade shocks. It directly addresses the core application domain of trade shocks and contributes to the understanding of distributional effects and anticipatory adjustment, which are key empirical contexts for Bartik instruments. Using US Census data for 1990-2000, we estimate effects of NAFTA on US wages. We look for effects of the agreement by industry and by geography, measuring each industry's vulnerability to Mexican imports, and each locality's dependance on vulnerable industries. We find evidence of both effects, dramatically lowering wage growth for blue-collar workers in the most affected industries and localities (even for service-sector workers in affected localities). These distributional effects are much larger than aggregate welfare effects estimated by other authors. In addition, we find strong evidence of anticipatory adjustment in places whose protection was expected to fall but had not yet fallen...	John McLaren, Shushanik Hakobyan
9	2020	Globalization, robotization, and electoral outcomes: Evidence from spatial regressions for Italy ↗ This paper directly engages with the core empirical applications of shift-share instruments in the robotics and political polarization literature, specifically testing the impact of robot adoption on electoral outcomes in Italy. It also explicitly addresses the methodological concerns regarding the robustness of shift-share IV designs, aligning with the project's focus on identification frameworks and diagnostics. Abstract Criticism of economic globalization and technological progress has gained support in Italy in the last two decades. However, due to the differentiated exposure of local labor markets to this process, electoral outcomes have varied considerably across the country. By observing the local impact of three global economic phenomena (flows of migrants, foreign competition in international trade, and diffusion of robots) alongside with the patterns of local electoral outcomes potentially associated with discontent, this study analyzes the economic forces driving the evolution of general elections in 2001, 2008, and 2013 in Italy. The analysis reveals that all these global factors had an...	Mauro Caselli, Andrea Fracasso, Silvio Traverso
9	2015	Looking for Local Labor-Market Effects of NAFTA ↗ This paper is a foundational precursor to the China shock literature, employing the core shift-share (Bartik) methodology to identify local labor market effects using industry shares and geographic dependence. It directly addresses the project's primary empirical application of trade shocks and illustrates the partial-equilibrium identification strategy central to the field. Using US Census data for 1990-2000, we estimate effects of NAFTA on US wages. We look for effects of the agreement by industry and by geography, measuring each industry’s vulnerability to Mexican imports, and each locality’s dependence on vulnerable industries. We find evidence of both effects, dramatically lowering wage growth for blue-collar workers in the most affected industries and localities (even for service-sector workers in affected localities, whose jobs do not compete with imports).	John McLaren, Shushanik Hakobyan
9	2017	The Effect of Immigration on Wages ↗ This paper is a foundational work in the immigration shift-share literature, introducing the Card (2001) 'enclave instrument' which interacts national push factors with local skill-cell shares. It directly addresses the empirical application axis regarding immigration effects on wages and exemplifies the core methodological challenge of endogenous immigrant allocation that the project investigates. I estimate the effect of immigration on wages of native male workers correcting for endogenous allocation of immigrants across education–experience cells. Exogenous variation is obtained from interactions of push factors, distance, and skill-cell dummies: distance mitigates the effect of push factors more severely for some skill groups. I propose a two-stage approach (Subsample 2SLS) that estimates the first stage regression with an augmented sample of destination countries and the second stage with a restricted subsample of interest. Asymptotic properties are discussed. Results show important OLS biases. For the United States and Canada, Subsample 2SLS elasticities average around minus...	Joan Llull
9	2019	U.S. job flows and the China shock ↗ This paper directly addresses the 'China shock' empirical application axis by analyzing local labor market effects such as employment dynamics and firm turnover using shift-share instruments. It provides key evidence on the mechanisms (establishment deaths) through which import competition impacts local economies, which is central to the project's focus on trade shocks. International trade exposure affects job flows along the intensive margin (from expansions and contractions of firms’ employment) as well as along the extensive margin (from births and deaths of firms). This paper uses 1992–2011 employment data from U.S. establishments to construct job flows at both the industry and commuting-zone levels, and then estimates the impact of the ‘China shock’ on each job-flow type. Using the two most influential measures of Chinese exposure, we find that the China shock affects U.S. employment mainly through deaths of establishments. At the commuting-zone level, we find evidence of large job reallocation from the Chinese-competition exposed sector to the...	Brian J. Asquith, Sanjana Goswami, David Neumark, et al.
9	2018	Long‐Run Patterns of Labour Market Polarization: Evidence from German Micro Data ↗ This paper provides empirical micro-evidence on the labor market polarization driven by routine-biased technological change, which is the theoretical foundation for the task-based models underpinning shift-share instrument designs in automation research. It directly supports the project's focus on how technology shocks differentially affect occupations based on task content, a key mechanism in the automation and trade shock literature. Abstract The past four decades have witnessed dramatic changes in the structure of employment. In particular, the rapid increase in computational power has led to large‐scale reductions in employment in jobs that can be described as intensive in routine tasks. These jobs have been shown to be concentrated in middle‐skill occupations. A large literature on labour market polarization characterizes and measures these processes at an aggregate level. However, to date, there is little information regarding the individual worker adjustment processes related to routine‐biased technological change. Using an administrative panel dataset for Germany, we follow workers over an extended period of time...	Ronald Bachmann, Merve Cim, Colin Green
9	2022	Explaining the Labor Share: Automation Vs Labor Market Institutions ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation axis of the project by modeling the labor share effects of robot adoption and contrasting them with labor market institutions. It provides theoretical underpinning for the task-based model and connects to the core empirical domain of automation's impact on labor market outcomes. We propose a simple model to assess the evolution of the US labor share and how automation affects employment. In our model, heterogeneous firms may choose a manual technology and hire a worker subject to matching frictions. Alternatively, they may choose an automated technology and produce using only machines (robots). Our model suggests that automation reduces the labor share but increases employment and wages. Furthermore, our model suggests that labor market institutions are unlikely to have played a major role in the fall of the US labor share after 1987. Instead, technological factors are a more promising candidate.	Luís Guimarães, Pedro Mazeda Gil
9	2017	Competing With the Dragon: Employment Effects of Chinese Trade Competition in 17 Sectors Across 18 OECD Countries ↗ This paper directly addresses the core 'China shock' empirical application of the shift-share design, analyzing local labor market effects of import competition across multiple OECD countries. It aligns perfectly with the project's focus on trade shocks, employment impacts, and skill-biased distributional consequences, serving as a key comparative context to the seminal Autor et al. work. China’s rapid rise on the global economic stage has substantial and unequal employment effects in advanced industrialized democracies given China’s large volume of low-wage labor. Thus far, these effects have not been analyzed in the comparative political economy literature. Building on pooled time-series data, we analyze the effects of Chinese trade competition across 17 sectors in 18 countries. We devote attention to a new channel, increased competition from China in foreign export markets. Our empirical findings reveal overall employment declines in sectors more exposed to Chinese imports. Furthermore, our results suggest that employment effects are not equally shared across skill...	Stefan Thewissen, Olaf van Vliet
9	2016	Racing with or Against the Machine? Evidence from Europe ↗ This paper directly applies the theoretical task-based framework and empirical methodology central to the project, specifically extending the Autor & Dorn (2013) polarization measure to a European regional context. It addresses the core axis of automation/robots and task-exposure indices, while also engaging with the project's concern regarding the distinction between direct substitution effects and broader general equilibrium spillovers. A fast-growing literature shows that technological change is replacing labor in routine tasks, raising concerns that labor is racing against the machine. This paper is the first to estimate the labor demand effects of routine-replacing technological change (RRTC) for Europe as a whole and at the level of 238 European regions. We develop and estimate a task framework of regional labor demand in tradable and non-tradable industries, building on Autor & Dorn (2013a) and Goos, Manning and Salomons (2014), and distinguish the main channels through which technological change affects labor demand. These channels include the direct substitution of capital for labor in task production, but also the...	Terry Gregory, Anna Salomons, Ulrich Zierahn
9	2020	The global distribution of routine and non-routine work ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis by developing cross-country measures of routine task intensity, which serve as the foundational exposure indices for occupation-level shift-share designs in automation and polarization research. It provides essential international context for the task-based model and validates the heterogeneity of technology exposure across different levels of economic development, a key component in understanding global shift-share applications. Studies of the effects of technology and globalization on employment and inequality commonly assume that occupations are identical around the world in the job tasks they require. To relax this assumption, we develop a regression-based methodology to predict the country-specific routine task intensity of occupations based on survey data collected in 46 low-, middle-, and high-income countries. We find that within the same occupation jobs in low- and middle-income countries are more routine intensive than in high-income countries. We attribute these differences mainly to lower technology use in less-developed countries. Using the predicted country-specific measures for 87 countries that...	Piotr Lewandowski, Albert Park, Simone Schotte
9	2024	Automation: Theory, Evidence, and Outlook ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis of the project by introducing and surveying the task-based model that underlies automation and occupation-level shift-share designs. It provides essential background on the mechanisms linking automation to labor market outcomes, which is central to interpreting empirical applications like robot adoption studies. This article reviews the literature on automation and its impact on labor markets, wages, factor shares, and productivity. I first introduce the task model and explain why this framework offers a compelling way to think about recent labor market trends and the effects of automation technologies. The task model clarifies that automation technologies operate by substituting capital for labor in a widening range of tasks. This substitution reduces costs, creating a positive productivity effect, but it also reduces employment opportunities for workers displaced from automated tasks, creating a negative displacement effect. I survey the empirical literature and conclude that there is wide...	Pascual Restrepo
9	2016	The Impact of Chinese Import Competition on the Local Structure of Employment and Wages: Evidence from France ↗ [Title only] This paper directly addresses the core trade shock application of shift-share instruments by examining the labor market effects of the China shock in France, a key jurisdiction in the international literature. It aligns with the project's focus on local labor market outcomes and import exposure, extending the empirical scope beyond the US-centric US shock studies. No abstract available.	Clément Malgouyres
9	2019	Estimating US Consumer Gains from Chinese Imports ↗ This paper is directly relevant as it employs the classic shift-share Bartik IV methodology using Chinese export growth as the shift component to instrument for import exposure in US local labor markets. It addresses the core trade shock literature by estimating the welfare implications (consumer gains) of the Chinese shock, complementing the existing focus on labor market costs. We estimate the size of US consumer gains from Chinese imports during 2004–2015. Using barcode-level price and expenditure data, we construct inflation rates under CES preferences, and use Chinese exports to Europe as an instrument. We find significant negative effects of Chinese imports on US prices. This effect is driven by both changes in the prices of existing goods and the entry of new goods, and it is similar across consumer groups by income or region. A simple benchmarking exercise suggests that Chinese imports led to a 0.19 percentage point annual reduction in the price index for consumer tradables. (JEL E21, E31, F14, P33)	Liang Bai, Sebastian Stumpner
9	2014	ROUTINIZATION‐BIASED TECHNICAL CHANGE AND GLOBALIZATION: UNDERSTANDING LABOR MARKET POLARIZATION ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis of the project by developing a unified general equilibrium model of labor market polarization driven by routinization-biased technical change and globalization. It aligns closely with the task-based framework and the discussion of structural approaches to bridge the gap between partial and general equilibrium effects. There is now ample evidence that jobs and wages have been polarizing at the extremes of the skill distribution since the early 1990s. Possible explanations include, among others, routinization‐biased technical change (technical progress substituting more easily for labor in performing routine rather than nonroutine tasks) and globalization (more specifically, offshore outsourcing by multinational firms). In this article, we develop a unified theoretical general equilibrium model and examine the implications of each competing hypotheses for labor market polarization . ( JEL J21, J23, J24, F66)	Jaewon Jung, Jean Mercenier
9	2021	Offshoring, Automation, Low-Skilled Immigration, and Labor Market Polarization ↗ This paper directly addresses the project's empirical applications regarding labor market polarization, automation, and immigration, which are key shift-share contexts. It explicitly analyzes the interplay between offshoring/automation and immigration on skill-specific employment and wages, aligning with the theoretical task-based model and the distinction between native and overall labor market effects central to the research design. We show that the observed polarization of employment toward the high- and low-skill occupations disappears when only native workers are considered. Instead, low-skilled immigration explains employment growth at the low tail of the skill distribution. Moreover, while employment rose, wages remained subdued in low-skill occupations. A data-disciplined structural model accounts for this evidence: Offshoring and automation negatively affect middle-skill occupations but enhance employment and wages for the high-skilled. Low-skill employment is sheltered from offshoring and automation, as it consists of manual, non-tradable services. However, low-skilled immigration depresses low-skill wages and...	Federico Mandelman, Andrei Zlate
9	2024	How do Workers Adjust to Robots? Evidence from China ↗ This paper directly addresses the core empirical application of the project by analyzing the labor market effects of robot adoption, a key domain within the automation axis. It provides crucial longitudinal evidence on how workers adjust to industrial robots, complementing the standard shift-share instrumental variable approach with detailed micro-level outcomes such as training participation and retirement decisions. Abstract We analyse the effects of exposure to industrial robots on labour market adjustments, exploring longitudinal household data from China. We find that a one-standard-deviation increase in robot exposure led to a decline in labour force participation (−1%), employment (−7%) and hourly earnings (−8%) of Chinese workers. At the same time, among those who kept working, robot exposure increased the number of hours worked by 8%. These effects were concentrated among the less educated and larger among male, prime-age and older workers. We also find that more exposed workers increased their participation in technical training and were significantly more likely to retire earlier.	Osea Giuntella, Yi Lu, Tianyi Wang
9	2020	An empirical examination of shift‐share instruments ↗ This paper directly addresses the core methodological framework of the project by empirically evaluating the construction and performance of Bartik-type shift-share instruments. It provides critical insights into the shares-based identification approach by highlighting the endogeneity risks associated with nontraded sectors, which is central to the methodological axis of the researcher's work. Abstract Bartik's (1991, 1993) approach to identifying shocks in demand to regional economies has been used extensively for nearly 30 years. We chronicle the development of Bartik‐type shift‐share instruments and examine the empirical performance of alternative versions that use different combinations of national shift and local share variables in their construction. We offer three main findings. First, instruments constructed from shares that omit employment in nontraded sectors empirically dominate versions that include total employment. Second, industrial sectors with high average shares and low variation across areas are more likely to be nontraded and endogenous. This suggests placing...	Daniel Broxterman, William D. Larson
9	2019	Employment shocks and anti-EU sentiment ↗ This paper directly applies the Bartik instrumental variable design to analyze the political consequences of local labor market shocks, aligning perfectly with the project's focus on trade shock literature and political polarization outcomes. It utilizes the standard shift-share construction of regional industry shares and national shifts to identify causal effects, serving as a key empirical example within the specified domain. Euroscepticism and the rise of populist parties have often been linked to economic insecurity. This paper identifies regional employment changes as causal factors for forming attitudes towards the European Union and voting for eurosceptic parties in European Parliament elections. To do so, I combine industry-specific employment data for roughly 260 European NUTS II regions with individual-level Eurobarometer survey data for the past 20 years and regional voting results. I apply panel data and instrumental variable methods; for the latter I construct a Bartik-style instrument, which predicts employment changes on the basis of regional industry specialization and Europe-wide sector specific...	Marie Lechler
9	2024	Artificial intelligence and jobs: evidence from US commuting zones ↗ This paper directly addresses the project's theoretical axis by applying the shift-share design to Artificial Intelligence exposure, utilizing the task-based framework to analyze automation effects on employment and inequality. It aligns closely with the empirical application of automation/robots and the discussion of LLM task-exposure measures, offering robust evidence on the local partial-equilibrium effects of AI. Abstract We study the effect of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on employment across US commuting zones (CZs) over the period 2000–2020. A simple model shows that AI can automate jobs or complement workers, and illustrates how to estimate its effect by exploiting variation in a novel measure of local exposure to AI: job growth in AI-related professions built from detailed occupational data. Using a shift-share instrument that combines industry-level AI adoption with local industry employment, we estimate robust negative effects of AI exposure on employment across CZs and time. We find that AI’s impact is different from other capital and technologies, and that it works through services more...	Alessandra Bonfiglioli, Rosario Crinò, Gino Gancia, et al.
9	2024	Artificial intelligence's creation and displacement of labor demand ↗ This paper directly applies the task-based shift-share framework to emerging artificial intelligence technologies, aligning perfectly with the project's theoretical axis on new automation exposure measures. It extends the automation literature by estimating local labor market effects of AI adoption, addressing the core empirical interest in displacement and creation dynamics within a shift-share context. The paper explores the dynamics of labor demand creation and displacement from adopting artificial intelligence (AI) in US metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). We combine unique online job postings and patent data to identify AI innovation and AI-skilled labor demand for specific industry sectors and locations. Our analysis shows that AI technologies are increasingly penetrating major industries and disproportionally generating new labor demand for AI-skilled workers in the MSAs in which AI innovation occurs. Our empirical model provides nascent evidence that demand for non-AI labor declines slightly in sectors and MSAs with higher AI skill adoption rates. This decline in labor demand is...	Taelim Choi, Nancey Green Leigh
9	2016	Immigration and the Property Market: Evidence from England and Wales ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share IV design to study immigration, aligning perfectly with the empirical applications axis regarding Card (2001) and enclave instruments. It provides relevant evidence on how immigration shocks affect local economic outcomes, specifically housing markets, which complements the project's focus on labor market and wage effects. Abstract This article investigates the link between immigration and property markets in England and Wales. Evidence from fixed effects and shift‐share–based instrumental variable regressions suggests that an increase in regional immigration, depending on the specification, either decreases prices at the lower end of the distribution up to the median or leaves them unchanged and has (almost) no effect on mean property prices or prices above the median. The evidence suggests that these findings can be explained through an interaction between the markets for rented and owned properties as well as through changes in the usage of housing space.	Nils Braakmann
9	2008	The Effect of Immigration along the Distribution of Wages This paper is a foundational study in the immigration shift-share literature, specifically addressing the distributional effects of immigration on native wages. It directly engages with the empirical application axis by analyzing how immigrant inflows impact different segments of the wage distribution, a key topic within the project's scope. This paper analyses the effect immigration has on wages of native workers. Unlike most previous work, we estimate wage effects along the distribution of wages. We derive a flexible empirical strategy that does not rely on pre-allocating immigrants to particular skill groups. In our empirical analysis, we demonstrate that immigrants downgrade considerably upon arrival. As for the effects on native wages, we find that immigration depresses wages below the 20th percentile of the wage distribution, but leads to slight wage increases in the upper part of the wage \ndistribution. The overall wage effect of immigration is slightly positive. The positive wage effects we find are, although modest...	Christian Dustmann, Tommaso Frattini, Ian Preston
9	2022	The Evolving Impact of Robots on Jobs ↗ This paper is a core empirical application of the Bartik instrument within the automation literature, directly examining the labor market effects of robot adoption using industry shares and local exposure. It addresses key mechanisms in the project's theoretical axis, specifically the task-based model and the dynamic evolution of robot impacts, while highlighting important general equilibrium spillovers via input-output linkages. The authors examine the impact of industrial robots on US labor markets between 2005 and 2016. Because some industries adopt robots more intensively, growth in robot stocks more heavily affect local labor markets with larger employment shares in those industries. This robot exposure variation occurs across 722 commuting zones in the continental United States. Analyzing the five-year intervals within this period, the authors find that robot exposure reduces employment in the earlier periods but augments employment in the more recent periods. Similarly, the effect of robot exposure on the local wage is initially negative but gradually rebounds and turns positive in more recent years. The...	John Y. L. Chung, Yong Suk Lee
9	2021	Trade shocks and the nationalist backlash in political attitudes: panel data evidence from Great Britain ↗ This paper is highly relevant as it applies the shift-share (Bartik) instrument to analyze the political consequences of trade shocks, specifically examining how exposure to import competition from China affects nationalist attitudes. It directly addresses the core empirical application of the China shock literature by extending the analysis to political polarization and backlash, which is a key theme in the researcher's project. This article leverages individual-level panel data on nationalist attitudes to contribute to the debate on the (economic) roots of popular opposition to globalization. We propose a ‘nationalist backlash’ hypothesis: Individuals living in regions suffering from stronger import competition form more nationalist attitudes as part of a broad counter-reaction to globalization. Analyzing data from the British Household Panel Study (BHPS), we document not only a decrease in support for EU membership but also a general shift towards more nationalist attitudes among respondents from regions exposed to higher imports from low-wage countries—in particular, China. We thus uncover a direct...	Nils D. Steiner, Philipp Harms
9	2018	Do Immigrants Take or Create Residents’ Jobs? Evidence from Free Movement of Workers in Switzerland* ↗ This paper directly addresses the immigration application of shift-share designs by utilizing an instrumental variable approach to estimate the local labor market effects of immigration flows. It provides empirical evidence on wage and employment impacts for resident workers, which is a core empirical domain of the researcher's project alongside trade and automation shocks. Abstract In 2002, Switzerland began to adopt free movement of workers with the European Union. We study the effects of the resulting immigration wave on resident workers. We focus on the level of national skill groups and propose an instrumental variable approach to address the endogeneity of immigration in this setting. Mostly relying on administrative data for the 2002–2011 period, we find that the immigration of foreign workers reduced unemployment of residents, and had limited adverse effects on their wages and employment. One reason for this is that younger residents changed to more demanding jobs as a response to the arrival of immigrants.	Christoph Basten, Michael Siegenthaler
9	2017	International import competition and the decision to migrate: Evidence from Mexico ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share instrumental variable design, using industry-level Chinese import shocks weighted by local Mexican employment shares to identify the causal effects of trade exposure on migration. It aligns perfectly with the China shock literature and the broader trade shock axis by examining local labor market responses to international competition, extending the standard employment outcomes to migration decisions. We analyze the effects of the increase in China’s import competition on Mexican domestic and international migration. We exploit the variation in exposure to competition from China, following its accession to the WTO in 2001, across Mexican municipalities and estimate the effect of international competition on the individual decision to migrate. Controlling for individual and municipality features, we find that individuals living in municipalities more exposed to Chinese import competition are more likely to migrate to other municipalities within Mexico, while a negative effect is found on the decision to migrate to the US. In particular, we find that Chinese import competition reduces...	Kaveh Majlesi, Gaia Narciso
9	2021	Do wages fall when women enter an occupation? ↗ This paper is highly relevant as it explicitly constructs and employs a shift-share instrument to analyze occupational wage dynamics, directly mirroring the methodological core of the project. It applies the Bartik design to the entry of women into occupations, providing a key empirical example of the shares-based identification framework discussed in the Goldsmith-Pinkham et al. literature. I present the first causal evidence on the effect of the entry of women into occupations on the wages of those occupations. To determine the causal effect of a change in gender composition, I construct a shiftshare instrument that interacts the dramatic increase in the relative educational attainment and workforce participation of women from 1960-2010 with the relative likelihood of men and women to enter the occupation. I find that a 10 percentage-point increase in the fraction of females within an occupation leads to an 8 percent decrease in average male wage and a 7 percent decrease in average female wage in the concurrent census year. Over the 10 years following the change in the gender...	Jorgen Harris
9	2017	Cutting the Losses: Reassessing the Costs of Import Competition to Workers and Communities ↗ [Title only] The title suggests a critical re-evaluation of the China shock literature, which is the primary empirical application of shift-share instruments in trade. It likely addresses methodological critiques or new findings on the local labor market effects of import exposure, directly engaging with the project's core themes of identification and policy implications. No abstract available.	Jonathan Rothwell
9	2024	The impact of Robots on Labour market transitions in Europe ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation axis of the project by examining the labor market effects of robot adoption in Europe. It aligns with the task-based model framework and extends the core empirical literature on robots by analyzing worker flows and cross-country heterogeneity. We study the effects of robot exposure on worker flows in 16 European countries between 2000-2017. Overall, we find small negative effects on job separations and no effects on job findings. We detect significant cross-country differences and find that labour costs are a major driver: the effects of robot exposure are generally larger in absolute terms in countries with relatively low or average levels of labour costs than in countries with high levels of labour costs. These effects are particularly pronounced for workers in occupations intensive in routine manual or routine cognitive tasks but are insignificant in occupations intensive in non-routine cognitive tasks. A counterfactual...	Ronald Bachmann, Myrielle Gonschor, Piotr Lewandowski, et al.
9	2017	Geographic Cross-Sectional Fiscal Spending Multipliers: What Have We Learned? ↗ This paper directly reviews the geographic cross-sectional fiscal spending multiplier literature, a core empirical application of shift-share designs exemplified by Nakamura and Steinsson (2014). It synthesizes empirical evidence and theoretical frameworks for mapping local partial-equilibrium effects to aggregate general-equilibrium multipliers, which is a central concern of the project. A geographic cross-sectional fiscal spending multiplier measures the effect of an increase in spending in one region in a monetary union. Empirical studies of such multipliers have proliferated in recent years. In this paper, I review this research and what the evidence implies for national multipliers. Based on an updated analysis of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and a survey of empirical studies, my preferred point estimate for a cross-sectional output multiplier is 1.8. Economic theory of how to map these multipliers into a national multiplier has also advanced. Drawing on the theoretical literature, the paper discusses conditions under which the cross-sectional multiplier...	Gabriel Chodorow-Reich
9	2017	Quantifying the Losses from International Trade This paper directly addresses the project's core focus on trade shocks by quantifying welfare losses from import competition, specifically leveraging the China shock instrument. It aligns with the theoretical and empirical axes by analyzing local labor market effects and general equilibrium implications using the established shift-share framework. This paper studies the welfare losses associated with exposure to international import competition. Empirically, we construct a measure of consumption at the local labor market level in the US, and exploit regional variation in exposure to imports from China in the early 2000s to study the response of consumption to trade shocks. We interpret this evidence within a standard incomplete market model with Ricardian trade across countries. The model features several mechanisms of partial insurance against adverse shocks to comparative advantage: self-insurance, variable labor supply, and migration. We calibrate model to match the observed consumption and labor market response (as measured in...	Mike Waugh
9	2021	Robots and Export Quality ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation and trade axis by examining how robot adoption affects export quality, a key outcome in the shift-share literature. It employs a Bartik-style instrumental variable using foreign robot diffusion to identify causal effects, aligning with the methodological focus on shifts-based identification and its applications in international trade. Robots are rapidly becoming a key part \n of manufacturing in developed and emerging economies. This \n paper examines a new channel for how automation can affect \n international trade: quality upgrading. Automation can \n reduce production errors, particularly of repetitive \n processes, leading to higher quality products. The effects \n of robot use on export quality are estimated, by combining \n cross-country and cross-industry data on industrial robots \n with detailed Harmonized System 10-digit trade data. Robot \n diffusion in (preexisting) foreign customers is used as an \n instrumental variable to predict robot adoption in the home \n country-industry. The findings show that robot...	Timothy Destefano, Jonathan Timmis
9	2016	Trade Liberalization and Mortality: Evidence from U.S. Counties ↗ This paper is a core application of the trade shock literature, directly estimating the local labor market effects of the 'China shock' on health outcomes, which is a key empirical domain of the project. It utilizes a shift-share design to identify causal impacts, fitting precisely within the scope of studying how import exposure affects non-economic outcomes like mortality and political polarization. We investigate the impact of a large economic shock on mortality. We find that counties more exposed to a plausibly exogenous trade liberalization exhibit higher rates of suicide and related causes of death, concentrated among whites, especially white males. These trends are consistent with our finding that more-exposed counties experience relative declines in manufacturing employment, a sector in which whites and males are over-represented. We also examine other causes of death that might be related to labor market disruption and find both positive and negative relationships. More-exposed counties, for example, exhibit lower rates of fatal heart attacks.	Justin R. Pierce, Peter K. Schott
9	2021	The effects of a trade shock on gender-specific labor market outcomes in Brazil ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) instrumental variable design to estimate the local labor market effects of the China import shock, a central empirical application in the project's scope. It extends the core trade shock literature by investigating gender-specific outcomes, thereby addressing key distributional consequences of trade exposure identified in the research agenda. As countries around the world increasingly engage in international trade, labor markets respond, creating both winners and losers. In this paper, I analyze the impact of a trade shock on gender-specific local labor market outcomes in Brazil. I use an instrumental variable approach and population census data for Brazil to estimate the effect of both increased imports from China and increased exports to China on male and female local labor market outcomes from 2000 to 2010. Regions more exposed to imports from China experience slower wage growth in the traded and formal sectors, but the declines are significantly larger for men, particularly in sectors with low shares of female employment...	Laura Connolly
9	2013	Untangling Trade and Technology: Evidence from Local Labor Markets ↗ This paper directly addresses the core trade shock applications of the shift-share design by empirically isolating the distinct effects of Chinese import competition and technological automation on local labor markets. It provides crucial evidence distinguishing between the employment impacts of trade (Bartik instruments based on industry shares) and technology, thereby clarifying the identification challenges central to the project's theoretical and empirical axes. We juxtapose the effects of trade and technology on employment in U.S. local labor markets between 1990 and 2007. Labor markets whose initial industry composition exposes them to rising Chinese import competition experience significant falls in employment, particularly in manufacturing and among non-college workers. Labor markets susceptible to computerization due to specialization in routine task-intensive activities experience significant occupational polarization within manufacturing and non-manufacturing but no net employment decline. Trade impacts rise in the 2000s as imports accelerate, while the effect of technology appears to shift from automation of production activities in...	David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon Hanson
9	2009	Inequality and Specialization: The Growth of Low-Skill Service Jobs in the United States This paper is central to the project as it establishes the foundational task-based model and documents the occupational polarization driven by automation that underpins modern shift-share instrument designs. It directly addresses the theoretical axis by linking routine task displacement to local labor market outcomes, providing key empirical context for the automation and skill-biased technological change literature. After a decade in which wages and employment fell precipitously in low-skill occupations and expanded in high-skill occupations, the shape of U.S. earnings and job growth sharply polarized in the 1990s. Employment shares and relative earnings rose in both low and high-skill jobs, leading to a distinct U-shaped relationship between skill levels and employment and wage growth. This paper analyzes the sources of the changing shape of the lower-tail of the U.S. wage and employment distributions. A first contribution is to document a hitherto unknown fact: the twisting of the lower tail is substantially accounted for by a single proximate cause - rising employment and wages in low-education...	David Autor, David Dorn
9	2017	The Labor Market Effects of Refugee Waves: Reconciling Conflicting Results ↗ This paper directly addresses the immigration axis of the project by critically evaluating the natural experiments and identification strategies used in the influential refugee wave literature. It highlights methodological pitfalls and diagnostic issues relevant to the Bartik design's reliance on exogenous supply shocks, reinforcing the consensus on immigration's labor market effects. An influential strand of research has tested for the effects of immigration on natives' wages and employment using exogenous refugee supply shocks as natural experiments. Several studies have reached conflicting conclusions about the effects of noted refugee waves such as the Mariel Boatlift in Miami and post-Soviet refugees to Israel. We show that conflicting findings on the effects of the Mariel Boatlift can be explained by a sudden change in the race composition of the Current Population Survey extracts in 1980, specific to Miami but unrelated to the Boatlift. We also show that conflicting findings on the labor-market effects of other important refugee waves can be produced by spurious...	Michael A. Clemens, Jennifer Hunt
9	2022	The effects of the Great Migration on urban renewal ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) instrumental variable design to estimate the causal effects of migration flows, mirroring the methodology central to the researcher's project on immigration and labor market shocks. It utilizes a classic construction interacting historical shares with national or sectoral shifts to purge local demand confounders, thereby fitting squarely within the methodological and empirical axes of the study. The Great Migration significantly increased the number of African American people moving to northern and western cities beginning in the first half of the twentieth century. We show that their arrival shaped “slum clearance” and urban redevelopment efforts in receiving cities. To estimate the effect of migrants, we instrument for Black population changes using a shift-share instrument that interacts historical migration patterns with local economic shocks that predict Black out-migration from the South. We find that local governments responded by undertaking more urban renewal projects that aimed to redevelop and rehabilitate “blighted” areas. More Black migrants also led to an increase in...	Ying Shi, Daniel Hartley, Bhash Mazumder, et al.
9	2022	Automation or globalization? The impacts of robots and Chinese imports on jobs in the United Kingdom ↗ This paper directly addresses the core empirical applications of the project by applying shift-share instrumental variable designs to analyze the simultaneous impacts of robot adoption and Chinese import competition on UK labor markets. It exemplifies the methodological framework and theoretical mechanisms, such as the task-based model, central to the researcher's investigation into automation and trade shocks. In this paper, we examine how robot adoption and Chinese import competition shaped employment patterns in 352 cities across the United Kingdom. We find that cities whose initial industry composition exposed them to industrial robots and China's integration into the world economy experienced significant employment declines. When pitched against other capital and technologies, the impact of robots remains distinct. Our findings suggest that one more robot per thousand workers reduced the employment-to-population ratio by 0.5 percentage points, while an increase of $1,000 imports from China per worker reduced the employment-to-population ratio by 0.11 percentage points. We also show that while...	Chinchih Chen, Carl Benedikt Frey, Giorgio Presidente
9	2024	The Employment Impact of Emerging Digital Technologies ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) instrumental variable design to estimate the local labor market effects of emerging digital technologies, a core empirical application of the project. It extends the theoretical axis on task-based models and automation exposure measures by constructing new occupation-level exposure indices using NLP techniques. This paper estimates the exposure of US occupations and industries to emerging digital technologies and their impact on US commuting zone (CZ) employment. Building upon the natural language processing approach introduced by Prytkova et al. (2024), we estimate the exposure of O ⋆ NET-SOC occupations and NAICS industries, thereby extending the open–access ‘TechXposure’ database to the US context. Using this new data source, we apply a shift-share design to instrument the CZ exposure to emerging digital technologies and estimate their employment impact across CZs between 2012 and 2019. We find that digital technologies have an overall positive net impact on US employment. However, the impact...	Ekaterina Prytkova, Fabien Petit, Deyu Li, et al.
9	2017	Trade Liberalization and Economic Development: Evidence from China's WTO Accession This paper employs a Bartik-style instrumental variable design combining industry-level export shocks with local sectoral specialization to estimate the economic impacts of trade liberalization on Chinese cities. It directly aligns with the project's focus on trade shock applications and the methodological framework of shift-share instruments, particularly in the context of the China trade literature. We study the effect of improvements in foreign market access brought by China’s WTO accession on Chinese local economies. We exploit cross-city variation in these improvements stemming from initial differences in sectoral specialization and exogenous cross-industry differences in US trade liberalization that originate from the elimination of the threat of a return to Smoot-Hawley tariffs for Chinese imports. We find that Chinese cities that experience greater improvement in their access to US markets following WTO accession exhibit faster population, output and employment growth as well as increased investment and FDI inflows. The benefits of WTO membership for Chinese local economies are...	Andrei Potlogea, Wenya Cheng
9	2022	The incidence of foreign market tariffs on farmland rental rates ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) instrumental variable design to estimate local economic impacts, mirroring the core methodology of the China shock and trade literature. It constructs localized exposure instruments using industry composition shares and foreign market shifts, which aligns perfectly with the project's focus on methodological frameworks and empirical applications in trade shocks. We estimate the impact of tariffs faced by US agricultural exports on farmland rents. The localized tariff is determined by the average of tariffs across trading partners for the crops produced within the county. We utilize shift-share designs to avoid endogeneity concerns that arise because factors affecting rents could also affect trade flows and cropping patterns. Using the county-level data from 2008 to 2017, we find that a one percentage point decrease in the localized tariff increases rents by 3%–6%. The 2018 Chinese retaliatory tariffs would have decreased rents by about 3% in the absence of any government support.	Jisang Yu, Nelson B. Villoria, Nathan Hendricks
9	2015	The Association between Immigration and Labor Market Outcomes in the United States ↗ This paper directly addresses the immigration application axis of the project by employing the shift-share (Bartik) instrumental variable to estimate the causal effects of immigration on native labor market outcomes. It aligns with the core methodological focus on instrument construction and provides empirical evidence relevant to the enclave instrument literature and local labor market absorption mechanisms. In this paper we present important correlations between immigration and labor market outcomes of native workers in the US. We use data on local labor markets, states and regions from the Census and American Community Survey over the period 1970-2010. We first look at simple correlations and then we use regression analysis with an increasing number of controls for observed and unobserved factors. We review the potential methods to separate the part of this correlation that captures the causal link from immigrants to native labor outcomes and we show estimates obtained with 2SLS method using the popular shift-share instrument. One fact emerging from all the specifications is that the net...	Gaetano Basso, Giovanni Peri
9	2020	Trade and Welfare (Across Local Labor Markets) ↗ This paper directly addresses the China shock literature by estimating local labor market welfare effects using exposure to trade shocks, a core application of the Bartik IV design. It complements the project's focus by providing key empirical results on employment, non-pecuniary costs, and welfare implications of trade-induced labor reallocation. What are the welfare implications of trade shocks? We provide a sufficient statistic that measures changes in welfare, to a first-order approximation, taking into account adjustment in labor supply, in frictional unemployment, and in the sectors to which workers apply while allowing for arbitrary heterogeneity in worker productivity and nonpecuniary returns across sectors. We apply these insights to measure changes in welfare across commuting zones (CZs) in the U.S. between 2000-2007. We find that granting China permanent normal trade relations lowers the welfare of a CZ at the 90th percentile of exposure by 3.1 percentage points relative to a CZ at the 10th percentile; of this...	Ryan Kim, Jonathan Vogel, Moises Yi
9	2025	Generative AI as Seniority-Biased Technological Change: Evidence from U.S. Résumé and Job Posting Data ↗ This paper directly addresses the project's theoretical axis by applying occupation-level exposure measures to generative AI, a modern extension of the task-based model central to the automation literature. It utilizes a shift-share-like identification strategy where firm-level AI exposure is constructed from industry/task-level trends, aligning with the methodological focus on constructing instruments from industry shifts and local shares. We study whether generative AI (GenAI) constitutes seniority-biased technological change, disproportionately reducing demand for junior workers. We develop a conceptual framework in which GenAI adoption reduces junior labor demand through task displacement and labor-saving productivity gains. We test the framework's mechanisms and implications using U.S. résumé data covering 65 million workers at more than 280,000 firms (2015--2025), allowing us to track firm-level employment by seniority. GenAI adoption is identified through text analysis that detects ‘GenAI integrator’ job postings, signaling active GenAI implementation by firms. Following adoption, junior employment declines sharply in...	Guy Lichtinger, Seyed Mahdi Hosseini Maasoum
9	2015	Immigration and the Distribution of Incomes ↗ [Title only] This paper is highly relevant as it directly addresses the core empirical application of immigration within the shift-share framework, focusing on the distributional impacts on native workers' wages. It aligns with the project's interest in how immigration inflows affect different skill groups, a key domain in the literature on labor market responses to labor supply shocks. No abstract available.	Francine D. Blau, Lawrence M. Kahn
9	2017	Endogenous Labor Supply and the Gains from International Trade This paper directly addresses the project's core theme by integrating shift-share exposure to international trade shocks with general equilibrium analysis, specifically focusing on endogenous labor supply and agglomeration forces. It extends the standard Bartik instrument framework used in trade shock literature by proposing a novel methodology to estimate local labor supply elasticity using model-implied instruments, thereby bridging the gap between partial-equilibrium identification and aggregate welfare effects. Recent empirical evidence documents that international trade shocks have substantial effects on employment across regional labor markets – see e.g., Autor, Dorn and Hanson (2013), and Dix-Carneiro and Kovak (2016). Despite this evidence, general equilibrium trade models have hitherto overlooked the welfare consequences of endogenous response of labor supply following a trade liberalization. In this paper, we propose a novel framework to investigate the local and aggregate impacts of trade cost shocks on employment and real wages. We consider a standard gravity model featuring endogenous local labor supply and local agglomeration forces. In this environment, we show that the interaction...	Federico Esposito, Costas Arkolakis, Rodrigo Adão
9	2020	Trade and Welfare (Across Local Labor Markets) ↗ This paper directly addresses the trade shock applications and local labor market effects central to the project, specifically quantifying the welfare impacts of the China shock across commuting zones. It provides a key empirical extension of the shift-share design by incorporating labor supply adjustments and frictional unemployment to measure comprehensive welfare changes rather than just employment or wage effects. What are the welfare implications of trade shocks? We provide a sufficient statistic that measures changes in welfare, to a first-order approximation, taking into account adjustment in labor supply, in frictional unemployment, and in the sectors to which workers apply while allowing for arbitrary heterogeneity in worker productivity and nonpecuniary returns across sectors. We apply these insights to measure changes in welfare across commuting zones (CZs) in the U.S. between 2000-2007. We find that granting China permanent normal trade relations lowers the welfare of a CZ at the 90th percentile of exposure by 3.1 percentage points relative to a CZ at the 10th percentile; of this...	Ryan Kim, Jonathan Vogel
9	2019	High-skilled immigration and native task specialization in U.S. cities ↗ The paper directly applies the shift-share instrumental variable design to analyze the labor market impacts of high-skilled immigration, fitting squarely within the project's core methodological and empirical axes. It addresses key themes such as task specialization, wage effects, and the use of local exposure instruments to purging endogenous migration flows, which are central to the immigration and task-based model discussions. Abstract This study examines the effect of high-skilled immigration on the occupational structure of native-born workers in U.S. cities. I find that increases in foreign college workers in STEM occupations, where they hold a comparative advantage over native-born workers, increase the specialization of college natives in social-intensive tasks. Consistent with the productivity effect of task specialization, I find no evidence of displacement effects but do find evidence of positive wage effects of foreign STEM flows on college natives, particularly for those in high-social occupations. Because migration flows are endogenous, I use a shift-share instrument to identify the effect of...	Gary C. Lin
9	2025	Regional trade policy uncertainty ↗ This paper employs a shift-share design analogous to the China shock literature, using sectoral tariff volatility as the 'shift' and state sectoral import composition as the 'share' to identify regional economic impacts. It directly addresses the methodological core of the project while providing relevant empirical context on how trade-related shocks affect local labor markets and regional GDP. Higher trade policy uncertainty has recessionary effects on U.S. states. To demonstrate this, we first build a novel empirical measure of regional trade policy uncertainty based on the volatility of national import tariffs at the sectoral level and on the sectoral composition of imports in U.S. states. We find that a state that is more exposed to an unanticipated increase in tariff volatility suffers from a larger drop in real GDP and employment than the average U.S. state. We then build a two-region open-economy model and find that the precautionary saving behavior is the main driver of the recession, although this effect is reinforced by high exposure to import tariffs. The feedback...	Céline Poilly, Fabien Tripier
9	2025	Internal migration and labor market adjustments in the presence of non-wage compensation ↗ This paper directly employs the shift-share (Bartik) design using historical shares and exogenous shifts to identify the causal effects of labor supply shocks, aligning perfectly with the project's core methodological focus. It addresses key empirical applications related to migration and labor market adjustments, offering relevant insights into how local labor markets respond to such shocks. In this paper, we argue that adjustments in non-wage compensation are empirically relevant and have important implications for understanding the effects of labor supply shocks. We examine the labor market impacts of internal migration in Brazil through a shift-share approach, which combines weather-induced migration with historical settlement patterns at each destination. Our findings indicate that increasing migration inflows lead to a reduction in formal employment while simultaneously increasing informality by a similar magnitude. Like previous studies, we observe a significant negative impact on earnings in the informal sector. Additionally, we provide evidence that the proportion of...	Raphael Corbi, Tiago Ferraz, Renata Narita
9	2021	More Robust Estimators for Panel Bartik Designs, With An Application to the Effect of Imports from China on US Employment ↗ This paper directly addresses the methodological axis of the project by proposing robust estimators for panel Bartik designs to handle heterogeneous effects and non-parallel trends, which are central concerns in the shares-based identification framework. It also provides a direct empirical application to the China shock literature, a core domain of the researcher's project. Bartik regressions use locations' differential exposure to nationwide sector-level shocks as an instrument to estimate the effect of a location-level treatment on an outcome. In the canonical Bartik design, locations' differential exposure to industry-level employment shocks are used as an instrument to measure the effect of their employment evolution on their wage evolution. Some recent papers studying Bartik designs have assumed that the sector-level shocks are exogenous and all have the same expectation. This second assumption may sometimes be implausible. For instance, there could be industries whose employment is more likely to grow than that of other industries. We replace that second...	Clément de Chaisemartin, Ziteng Lei
9	2023	Design-Based Identification with Formula Instruments: A Review ↗ This paper directly reviews the methodological framework of shift-share (Bartik) instruments, which is the central topic of the research project. It specifically addresses the identification issues and econometric tools relevant to the design-based approach discussed in the project's methodological axis. Many studies in economics use instruments or treatments which combine a set of exogenous shocks with other predetermined variables by a known formula. Examples include shift-share instruments and measures of social or spatial spillovers. We review recent econometric tools for this setting, which leverage the assignment process of the exogenous shocks and the structure of the formula for identification. We compare this design-based approach with conventional estimation strategies based on conditional unconfoundedness, and contrast it with alternative strategies that leverage a model for unobservables.	Kirill Borusyak, Peter Hull, Xavier Jaravel
9	2025	Augmenting or Automating Labor? The Effect of AI Development on New Work, Employment, and Wages ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation axis of the project by applying an instrumental variable design to estimate the labor market effects of AI development, aligning with the task-based model framework. It utilizes a shift-share-like strategy by leveraging foreign AI trends as instruments, which connects to the methodological focus on foreign shift variants and the theoretical discussion of task exposure indices for emerging technologies. Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping the labor market by changing the task content of occupations. This study investigates the impact of AI development on the emergence of new work, employment, and wages in the United States from 2015 to 2022. I develop innovative methods to measure occupational and industry exposure to AI technologies that substitute labor (automation AI ) or enhance workers' output (augmentation AI), and to identify new work (i.e., new job titles). To address endogeneity, I use instrumental variable estimators, leveraging AI development in countries with limited economic ties to the United States. The findings indicate that automation AI negatively impacts new work...	David Marguerit
9	2022	The partisan divide in U.S. congressional communications after the China shock ↗ This paper directly extends the China shock literature by examining the political polarization effects of import exposure, a key empirical domain of the project. It utilizes the standard shift-share instrumental variable framework to link local industry composition to congressional communication strategies, aligning closely with the methodological and application axes. Abstract Emerging literature shows that rising import exposure resulting from the China shock devastated U.S. manufacturing and contributed to the rise of Donald Trump. However, several studies found that these recent localized economic shocks did not negatively impact the tenure of incumbent politicians, and this outcome remains a puzzle. In this paper, we examine the partisan difference in congressional communication strategies on China and trade‐related issues. We propose a theory of China‐bashing to explain how members of Congress frame the negative impacts of trade to their voters. Using press release data from members of Congress, we show that, even though Chinese import competition...	John Kuk, Deborah Seligsohn, Jiakun Jack Zhang
9	2014	The Impact of Chinese Import Penetration on Danish Firms and Workers ↗ [Title only] This paper directly addresses the trade shock domain, specifically focusing on the 'China shock' literature which is a primary empirical application of the shift-share design. It likely employs the Bartik instrument to estimate local labor market effects of import competition, aligning closely with the project's core methodological and applied interests. No abstract available.	Damoun Ashournia, Jakob Roland Munch, Daniel X. Nguyen
9	2015	The Effects of Import Competition on Health in the Local Economy ↗ This paper directly addresses the trade shock axis of the project by estimating the causal effects of Chinese import competition, a core application of the shift-share (Bartik) instrument, on health outcomes. It provides empirical evidence on local labor market effects, extending the standard analysis of employment and wages to welfare measures consistent with the project's focus on the China shock literature. We study the effects of Chinese import exposure in the US on self-reported health measures. We find that average mental, physical, and general health worsens in local labor markets exposed to greater import competition between 2000 and 2007. The effects are greatest for mental health. Moving a region from the 25th to 75th percentile of import exposure corresponds to a 5.5% increase in the time individuals report suffering from poor mental health, adding about 0.18 days per month. The effects are greatest for the employed, consistent with theory from the health literature pertaining to the documented effects of import competition on wages, employment and job security. These estimates provide...	T. Clay McManus, Georg Schaur
9	2025	Large language models at work in China’s labor market ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis by extending the task-based model to large language models and proposing an AI learning theory that deviates from traditional routinization hypotheses. It employs occupational exposure measures analogous to the Bartik instruments discussed in the project, providing relevant empirical evidence on how advanced AI affects labor market outcomes. This paper explores the potential impacts of large language models (LLMs) on the Chinese labor market. We analyze occupational exposure to LLM capabilities by incorporating human expertise and LLM classifications, following the methodology of Eloundou et al. (2023). The results indicate a positive correlation between occupational exposure and both wage levels and experience premiums at the occupation level. This suggests that higher-paying and experience-intensive jobs may face greater exposure risks from LLM-powered software. We then aggregate occupational exposure at the industry level to obtain industrial exposure scores. Both occupational and industrial exposure scores align with expert...	Qin Chen, Jinfeng Ge, Huaqing Xie, et al.
9	2023	Technological knowledge and wages: from skill premium to wage polarization ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis of the project by employing a task-based model to analyze how automation shocks drive wage polarization and changes in skill premiums. It aligns closely with the core mechanisms linking technological change to labor market outcomes, specifically focusing on the routine-biased technical change framework central to the researcher's scope. Abstract This paper studies the impact of automation shocks on the technological-knowledge level, skill premium (or wage inequality), real prices, output, and economic growth. To highlight the economic mechanisms, we devise a task-based direct technical change model that allows us to analyze the determinants of the threshold task, the relative output and prices between sectors, intra- and inter-sectoral wage differences, wage polarization and economic growth rates. We observe that an increase in the efficiency of skilled or unskilled workers as well as a decrease in the efficiency of medium-skilled workers as possible result of automation always increase wage polarization as well as...	Óscar Afonso, Tiago Neves Sequeira, Derick Almeida
9	2024	Demographic impacts of China’s trade liberalization: marriage, spousal quality, and fertility ↗ This paper directly employs the shift-share (Bartik) instrumental variable design to analyze the local labor market impacts of trade liberalization, aligning perfectly with the project's core methodology and the China shock literature. It extends the empirical applications axis by investigating demographic outcomes like marriage and fertility, demonstrating how trade-induced economic changes affect individual behavior in line with the project's focus on comprehensive local effects. This study examines the effects of export tariff liberalization on women’s marriage and fertility choices in China. Utilizing a shift-share design that combines industry-level variation in export tariff reduction with differences in industry composition across cities, we discover that women in areas with greater export tariff reductions exhibit a reduced inclination to marry, postpone marriage, and have a higher likelihood to marry well-educated partners. Moreover, these reductions in export tariffs negatively impact women’s fertility primarily through altering marriage formation and timing, and marginally affect newborn sex ratios. We further explore potential channels and highlight the...	Wei Luo, Xianqiang Zou
9	2021	Costs and benefits of trade shocks: Evidence from Chilean local labor markets ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) instrumental variable design to analyze the labor market effects of trade shocks, utilizing industry specialization shares and national industry-level shifts as instruments. It contributes to the core trade shock literature by providing empirical evidence on the costs and benefits of import competition and export demand in a developing economy context. We study Chile’s labor market responses to trade shocks during 1996-2006, exploiting spatial and time variations in trade exposure arising from initial differences in industry specialization across local labor markets and the evolution of shocks across industries. We take advantage of China’s supply and demand’s worldwide shocks to instrument for Chinese import competition and demand for Chilean exports. Our main finding is that increasing manufacturing import competition implied a significant rise in labor informality in more exposed local markets, especially among young and unskilled workers. These groups also suffered significant relative wage losses. Meanwhile, locations that benefited...	Andrés César, Guillermo Falcone, Leonardo Gasparini
9	2022	Local Shocks and Internal Migration: The Disparate Effects of Robots and Chinese Imports in the Us ↗ This paper directly addresses the project's core empirical applications by comparing the local labor market effects of the two primary shift-share instruments: Chinese import competition and industrial robots. It utilizes the exact methodological framework of exposure indices to identify disparate migration responses, thereby contributing to the central discussion on partial-equilibrium effects and adjustment mechanisms. Migration is a key mechanism through which local labor markets adjust to economic shocks. In this paper, we analyze the migration response of American workers to two of the most important shocks that hit US manufacturing since the 1990s: Chinese import competition and the introduction of industrial robots. Exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in exposure across US local labor markets over time, we establish a new fact. Even though both shocks drastically reduced employment in the manufacturing sector, only robots led to a sizable decline in population size. We provide evidence that negative employment spillovers outside manufacturing, caused by robots but not by Chinese imports, can...	Marius Faber, Andrés Sarto, Marco Tabellini
9	2021	Death by Robots? Automation and Working-Age Mortality in the United States ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation/robots empirical application axis by investigating the health consequences of robot adoption, a key extension of the Acemoglu & Restrepo (2020) framework. It utilizes exogenous variation in automation to estimate local partial-equilibrium effects on mortality, fitting squarely within the project's focus on the broader impacts of shift-share instruments in the automation domain. The decline of manufacturing employment is frequently invoked as a key cause of worsening U.S. population health trends, including rising mortality due to ‘deaths of despair’. Increasing automation—the use of industrial robots to perform tasks previously done by human workers—is one major structural force driving the decline of manufacturing jobs and wages. In this study we examine the impact of automation on age-sex specific mortality. Using exogenous variation in automation to support causal inference, we find that increases in automation over the period 1993–2007 led to substantive increases in all-cause mortality for both men and women aged 45-54. Disaggregating by cause, we find...	Rourke O’Brien, Atheendar Venkataramani, Elizabeth F. Bair
9	2024	Relaxing the exclusion restriction in shift-share instrumental variable estimation ↗ This paper directly addresses a critical methodological concern in the shift-share IV framework by proposing methods to relax the exclusion restriction, which is central to the project's focus on identification assumptions and diagnostics. It specifically applies these techniques to the immigration application, a key empirical domain within the researcher's scope. Abstract Many economic studies use shift-share instruments to estimate causal effects. Often, all shares need to fulfil an exclusion restriction, making the identifying assumption strict. This paper proposes to use methods that relax the exclusion restriction by selecting valid shares. I apply the methods to estimate the effect of immigration on wages. The coefficient becomes much lower and often changes sign, which is in line with arguments made in the literature.	Nicolas Apfel
9	2022	Local fiscal multipliers of different government spending categories ↗ This paper directly addresses the fiscal policy application of shift-share IV designs by estimating local fiscal multipliers using state-level government spending shocks, which is the core empirical context of Nakamura & Steinsson (2014). It extends the methodological axis by comparing different spending categories within the same instrumental variable framework, providing relevant insights for understanding the heterogeneity of treatment effects in shift-share applications. Abstract This paper compares multipliers of different categories of US federal government spending, and in doing so provides a new insight as to why fiscal multipliers may differ across countries and time. We identify exogenous federal government spending shocks at the state level for defense and non-defense spending. Using a projection-based approach, we estimate the cumulative multiplier due to shocks in either of these spending categories. Our results indicate that defense spending yields lower multipliers than non-defense spending. Thus, focusing only on defense spending may result in underestimating the multiplier for government spending.	Thomas van Gemert, Lenard Lieb, Tania Treibich
9	2024	The unequal effects of trade and automation across local labor markets ↗ This paper directly addresses the project's core themes by jointly quantifying the local labor market effects of the China trade shock and automation, which are the two primary empirical applications of the shift-share design. It explicitly models the sector-specific exposure mechanisms underlying these Bartik-style instruments and discusses their combined distributional impacts across local markets. We quantify the joint impact of the China shock and automation of labor, across US commuting zones (CZs) in the period 2000–2007. To this end, we employ a multi-sector gravity model of trade with Roy-Fréchet worker heterogeneity across sectors, where labor input can be automated. Automation and increased import competition from China are both sector-specific; they lead to contractions in a sector’s labor demand and a decline in relative income for CZs more specialized in that sector, amplified by a voluntary reduction in hours worked and an increase in frictional unemployment. The estimated model fits well with the aggregate performance of manufacturing subsectors and with the variation...	Simon Galle, Linnea Lorentzen
9	2024	Import shocks and voting behavior in Europe revisited ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share design to the China shock literature, focusing on the political polarization outcomes central to the project's empirical applications axis. It contributes to the ongoing methodological and empirical debate regarding the short- versus long-run impacts of trade exposure on voting behavior, aligning with the project's interest in labor market and social consequences of import competition. We provide first evidence for the long-run causal impact that Chinese imports to European regions had on voting outcomes and revisit earlier estimates of the short-run impact for a methodological reason. The fringes of the political spectrum gained ground many years after the China shock plateaued and, unlike an earlier study by Colantone and Stanig (2018b), we do not find any robust evidence for a short-run effect on far-right votes. Instead, far-left and populist parties gained in the short run. We identify persistent long-run effects of import shocks on voting. These effects are biased towards populism and, to a lesser extent, to the far-right.	Annika Backes, Steffen Mueller
9	2024	The Demand-Side Story: Structural Change and the Decline in Female Labour Force Participation in India ↗ This paper directly applies the Bartik shift-share instrumental variable framework to estimate the causal effect of local labour demand on female employment, a core methodological focus of the project. It also addresses the critical distinction between demand-driven and supply-driven variations, which is central to the identification assumptions discussed in the shares-based versus shifts-based literature. Mainstream literature attributes the decline in female labour force participation rate (FLFPR) in India between 2004-05 and 2017-18 primarily to supply-side factors. In this paper, we show that, in fact, demand-side factors are predominantly responsible for the decline. We begin by demonstrating that the contribution of supply-side factors to the FLFPR decline has been reducing over time. Changes in supply-side factors explain a miniscule part of the decline between 2011-12 and 2017-18. We estimate the contribution of structural transformation and local labour demand as the key determinants of declining FLFPR. Our identification strategy uses the Bartik shift-share instrument as the...	Ashwini Deshpande, Jitendra Singh
9	2021	Local Shocks and Internal Migration: The Disparate Effects of Robots and Chinese Imports in the Us ↗ This paper directly addresses the core empirical applications of the shift-share design by comparing the local labor market effects of Chinese imports and robot adoption. It contributes to the methodological discussion by analyzing how these distinct shocks differentially impact migration and broader labor market spillovers, which is central to understanding the partial-equilibrium implications of Bartik instruments. Migration is a key mechanism through which local labor markets adjust to economic shocks. In this paper, we analyze the migration response of American workers to two of the most important shocks that hit US manufacturing since the 1990s: Chinese import competition and the introduction of industrial robots. Exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in exposure across US local labor markets over time, we establish a new fact. Even though both shocks drastically reduced employment in the manufacturing sector, only robots led to a sizable decline in population size. We provide evidence that negative employment spillovers outside manufacturing, caused by robots but not by Chinese imports, can...	Marius Faber, Andrés Sarto, Marco Tabellini
9	2023	The role of immigrants in the United States labor market and Chinese import competition ↗ This paper directly engages with the China shock literature, a core empirical application of the shift-share design, by examining how immigrant mobility interacts with import exposure instruments. It provides critical insights into the adjustment mechanisms of local labor markets to exogenous trade shocks, addressing key concerns about the distributional effects and general equilibrium implications central to the researcher's project. I propose a mechanism through which local labor markets adjust to China trade shocks: the geographic mobility of immigrants. Immigrants are more mobile than natives to the trade shocks. A $1000 increase in import exposure per worker leads to a 2.6 percent decline in the immigrant population but only an insignificant 0.5 percent decline in the native population. Additionally, immigrant mobility lessens the negative effects of trade shocks on employment and wages for immobile natives. Natives in areas with more immigrants experience smaller declines in the employment and wages compared to natives in areas with fewer immigrants.	Chan Yu
9	2023	Outsource to India: The impact of service outsourcing to India on the labor market in the United States ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share instrumental variable design to study service offshoring, utilizing a 'foreign shift' variant where Indian exports to third markets instrument for US import growth, mirroring the ADH (2013) methodology. It addresses the core empirical application axis by estimating the labor market impacts of a specific global shock (service exports to India) on US occupational employment, fitting seamlessly within the trade shock and automation/offshoring literature. Abstract Service offshoring raises the fear of job loss for high‐skilled workers, unlike goods offshoring, because workers at home compete with highly educated workers in low‐income countries. This paper examines whether the increase in the United States's service offshoring to India has reduced the domestic employment of the occupations with greater exposure to Indian service imports. To account for endogeneity, I instrument for the growth of the United States's service imports from India by exploiting the change in Indian exports to European countries. Service offshoring reduces total employment from 2000 to 2006; however, this effect disappears overall and becomes positive for...	Jiwon Park
9	2020	The ‘China Shock’ revisited: insights from value added trade flows ↗ This paper directly revisits the seminal Autor-Dorn-Hanson (2013) 'China shock' study, which is the foundational empirical application of the shift-share (Bartik) IV design in trade literature. It addresses core methodological concerns regarding the construction of import exposure instruments and the resulting local labor market effects, fitting squarely within the project's empirical and methodological axes. Abstract We exploit a decomposition of gross trade flows into their value added components to reassess the relationship between increased imports from China and manufacturing jobs in US local labour markets following the seminal paper of Autor, Dorn, and Hanson (2013, ADH). Decomposed trade flows enable us to address identification and measurement issues inherent to gross trade data. In particular, it allows us to remove US value added in Chinese exports from the exposure measure which is mechanically correlated with the dependent variable and overstates the volume of the trade shock. In addition, the decomposition permits to correct for double counting, to remove primary and services...	Adam Jakubik, Victor Stolzenburg
9	2024	Drinking in despair: Unintended consequences of automation in China ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation domain of the project by estimating the local effects of robot adoption on individual health outcomes, extending the standard labor market analysis to well-being metrics. It aligns with the project's focus on the task-based model and the distributional consequences of technological shocks identified through shift-share-style exposure measures. The side effects of technological progress on the economy have been discussed frequently, but little is known regarding its health consequences. By combining the national individual-level panel data of alcohol drinking with the prefecture-level robot exposure rate in China, we find that one more robot exposure rate could induce up to 2.2% points increase in the probability of problem drinking. Such a pattern of problem drinking is explained by negative emotions, which can be ascribed to job loss due to substitution, higher income vulnerability, and reduced organization participation. Further, we provide evidence that automation can incur health costs, particularly for easily substituted...	Wenyi Lu, Siyuan Fan
9	2016	Worker-Level Consequences of Import Shocks ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share instrumental variable design to analyze the labor market consequences of import shocks, specifically focusing on the distinction between final goods competition and offshoring. It aligns perfectly with the project's core empirical applications in the China shock literature and its focus on worker-level earnings and employment trajectories. We analyse the effects of imports on employment and earnings by distinguishing between import competition in final products and firms' use of imports in production (offshoring). We use Finnish worker-firm data merged with product-level trade data. We focus on Chinese imports and instrument them by changes in China's share of world exports to other EU countries. Both types of importing increase the job loss risk for all workers and, in particular, for workers in production occupations. An increase in import competition has larger negative effects than an increase in offshoring. Production workers suffer the largest earnings losses, while for high- skilled workers the wage-effect is positive.	Katariina Nilsson Hakkala, Kristiina Huttunen
9	2017	Did immigration contribute to wage stagnation of unskilled workers? ↗ This paper directly addresses the immigration application axis of the project, specifically examining the causal effects of immigration on native wages, a core topic alongside Card (2001). It engages with the broader debate on whether local labor demand or supply shocks drive wage outcomes, which is central to the methodological discussion of shift-share identification frameworks. Abstract In this paper we first show that the timing and skill distribution of Immigrants between 1970 and 2016 imply they did not contribute to the decline in the wages of native, non-college educated workers - including high school dropouts - at the national level. We then review other evidence at the local level, which implies immigration is not associated with lower non-college wages. Rather, higher immigration seems associated with higher average (and college-level) wages. Local externalities, complementarities, efficient specialization and appropriate technological choice may imply at least part of the positive association is causal.	Giovanni Peri
9	2018	The Economic Determinants of the “Cultural Backlash”: Globalization and Attitudes in Western Europe ↗ This paper is a direct application of the shift-share (Bartik) IV design, specifically within the 'China shock' trade literature using local industry shares and foreign shifts as instruments. It aligns perfectly with the project's empirical axis on trade shocks and political polarization, while addressing the core methodological concern of instrument construction and exclusion restriction validity. We investigate the impact of globalization on people’s attitudes in fifteen Western European countries, over 1988-2008. We employ data from the European Social Survey (ESS) and the European Values Study (EVS). We compute a time-varying region specific measure of exposure to Chinese imports, based on the historical industry specialization of each region. We attribute to each individual the import shock in the region of residence in the years prior to the survey. To identify the causal impact of the import shock, we instrument imports to Europe using Chinese imports to the United States. We find that respondents residing in regions that received stronger globalization shocks are...	Italo Colantone, Piero Stanig
9	2023	Trading Places: Mobility Responses of Native and Foreign-Born Adults to the China Trade Shock ↗ This paper directly addresses the China shock literature by examining the interaction between import competition and immigration, a key topic within the project's scope. It provides empirical evidence on how labor mobility responses to shift-share predicted trade shocks vary by nativity, contributing to the understanding of local labor market adjustment mechanisms. Previous research finds that the greater geographic mobility of foreign than native-born workers following economic shocks helps to facilitate local labor market adjustment to shifting regional economic conditions. We examine the role that immigration may have played in enabling U.S. commuting zones to respond to manufacturing job loss caused by import competition from China. Although population headcounts of the foreign-born fell by more than those of the native-born in regions exposed to the China trade shock, the overall contribution of immigration to labor market adjustment in this episode was small. Because most U.S. immigrants arrived in the country after manufacturing regions were...	David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon Hanson
9	2021	Automation and Human Capital Adjustment: The Effect of Robots on College Enrollment ↗ [Title only] This paper directly addresses the automation axis of the project by examining the impact of robot adoption on human capital investment, specifically college enrollment. It aligns with the task-based model literature and extends the core Bartik instrument applications to include educational responses to technological shocks. No abstract available.	Giuseppe Di Giacomo, Benjamin Lerch
9	2024	Tasks at Work: Comparative Advantage, Technology and Labor Demand ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis of the project by reviewing the task-based model that underlies the automation and shift-share literature. It explicitly connects the micro-foundations of technology shocks to labor demand, aligning with the project's focus on the task-based framework and the distinction between reduced-form and structural approaches to estimating general equilibrium effects. This chapter reviews recent advances in the task model and shows how this framework can be put to work to understand trends in the labor market in recent decades. Production in each industry requires the completion of various tasks that can be assigned to workers with different skills or to capital. Factors of production have well-defined comparative advantage across tasks, which governs substitution patterns. Technological change can: (1) augment a specific labor type—e.g., increase the productivity of labor in tasks it is already performing; (2) augment capital; (3) automate work by enabling capital to perform tasks previously allocated to labor; (4) create new tasks. The task model...	Daron Acemoğlu, Fredric Kong, Pascual Restrepo
9	2021	Chinese vs. US Trade in an Emerging Country: The Impact of Trade Openness in Chile ↗ This paper directly addresses the 'China shock' literature by empirically estimating the local labor market effects of import competition from China, a core application of the shift-share design. It mirrors the methodological framework of Autor et al. by analyzing exposure to specific trade shocks at a granular industry level, fitting squarely within the project's empirical and theoretical axes. This paper explores the effects of import competition on the manufacturing sector in Chile following the implementation of the country’s two largest Free Trade Agreements (FTA) (with the USA and China). Exploiting cross-industry variation in import exposure, we analyse the effects on manufacturing sales, employment and labour productivity at the finest level of industrial classification (4 digit ISIC level). We detect an overall negative effect of increased Chinese import penetration, owing to substitution effects from low and medium tech imports and a less pronounced effect from USA imports. By introducing interaction effects, we find that the levels of foreign ownership and the export...	Alexandra Sotiriou, Andrés Rodríguez‐Pose
9	2021	The Impact of Growth in Manufactured Imports from China on Employment in Australia<sup>*</sup> ↗ This paper applies the shift-share design to the 'China shock' literature, directly estimating the local labor market effects of import competition in Australia. It provides key empirical evidence on how exposure to foreign supply shocks affects employment, which is central to the project's core design and applications axis. We examine how rapid growth in imports of manufactured goods from China affected employment in Australia from 1991 to 2006. Alternative sources of variation in Chinese import exposure (at industry level and between local labour markets) are used to identify the effect on employment. Growth in imports from China is estimated to have reduced manufacturing employment by around 53,200 to 78,900 workers, representing 5.3 to 7.5 per cent of that workforce in 1991. Largest impacts are found for manufacturing industries most exposed to import competition from China; and from 2001 to 2006 when import growth was strongest.	Aaron Blanco, Jeff Borland, Michael Coelli, et al.
9	2017	Import competition from and offshoring to low-income countries: Implications for employment and wages at U.S. domestic manufacturers ↗ This paper directly addresses the core empirical application of import competition shocks within the China shock literature, analyzing local labor market effects on employment and wages. It aligns with the project's focus on how trade exposure impacts domestic manufacturers, providing relevant evidence on the mechanisms of adjustment to foreign competition. Using confidential linked firm-level trade transactions and census data between 1997 and 2012, we provide new evidence on how American firms without foreign affiliates adjust employment and wages as they adapt to import competition from low-income countries. We provide stylized facts on the input sourcing strategies of these domestic firms, contrasting them with multinationals operating in the same industry. We then investigate how changes in firm input purchases from low-income countries as well as domestic market import penetration from these sources are correlated with changes in employment and wages at surviving domestic firms. Greater offshoring by domestic firms from low-income...	Fariha Kamal, Mary E. Lovely
9	2016	La montée en puissance des machines : comment l’ordinateur a changé le travail ↗ This paper directly addresses the task-based model and labor market polarization driven by computer and robot adoption, which are core components of the project's theoretical and automation axes. It discusses the structural shift in employment composition and wage inequality resulting from technology shocks, aligning closely with the Acemoglu & Autor framework and the empirical focus on automation's effects. Les ordinateurs et les robots sont en train de révolutionner l’organisation du travail. La multiplication des possibilités d’automatisation des tâches fait craindre une raréfaction des opportunités d’emploi pour les travailleurs et une augmentation du chômage. Toutefois, les éléments de preuve empiriques existants démontrent qu’évolution des technologies ne rime pas systématiquement avec chômage de masse. En dépit des grandes avancées technologiques intervenues depuis la révolution industrielle, l’emploi a progressivement décliné. Or l’accroissement du recours aux ordinateurs et aux robots lors des quatre dernières décennies a modifié la composition du marché du travail : alors que de...	David Dorn
9	2015	The Rise of the Machines: how computers have changed work ↗ This presentation by David Dorn directly addresses the core theme of automation and labor market changes, a primary empirical application of shift-share designs in the researcher's project. It aligns with the theoretical axis on task-based models and occupation-level exposure indices that underpin the automation literature. The so-called "Rise of the Machines" has fundamentally transformed the organization of work during the last four decades. While enthusiasts are captivated by the new technologies, many worry that these machines will eventually lead to mass unemployment, as robots and computers substitute for human labor. Are computers just about to take over from humans? You will receive the answer to this and related questions from Prof. David Dorn, a specialist in international trade and labor markets.	David Dorn
9	2013	Do immigrants take or create residents’ jobs?: Quasi-experimental evidence from Switzerland ↗ This paper directly addresses the immigration axis of the project by employing a shift-share instrumental variable design to identify the causal effects of immigration on native labor market outcomes. It contributes to the methodological discussion by developing tailored shift-share variants for small-open economies that isolate exogenous migration push-factors, aligning closely with the core theoretical and empirical frameworks of the research project. We estimate the causal effect of immigration on the labor market outcomes of resident employees in Switzerland, whose foreign labor force has increased by 32.8% in the last decade. To address endogeneity of immigration into different labor market cells, we develop new variants of the shift-share instrument, tailored for small-open economies, that exploit only that part in the variation of immigration which can be explained by migration push-factors in the source countries. We find that immigration has reduced unemployment of residents and has enabled them to fill more demanding jobs, while it had no adverse effect on wages and employment.	Christoph Basten, Michael Siegenthaler
9	2023	Distributional effect of import shocks on British local labour markets ↗ This paper directly addresses the trade shock axis of the project by applying a shift-share-style identification strategy to UK labor markets, examining the distributional effects of import competition. It aligns with the core empirical focus on how local industrial structure interacts with external shocks to affect wages, contributing to the broader literature on the China shock and labor market adjustment. Abstract This article investigates the causal effect of import shocks on the wage distribution using individual-level data from the UK in the period 1997–2010. The analysis exploits regional variation in initial industrial structure and concentration for identification, and applies a group IV quantile approach to estimate the effect of import shocks on workers at different parts of the wage distribution. The study finds that the effect of import shocks generated by increased import competition is concentrated on the middle of the wage distribution: while the import shocks negatively and significantly affect workers at the bottom-middle of the wage distribution, its effect on the very bottom...	Anwar S Adem
9	2025	Revealed comparative disadvantage of infants: Exposure to NAFTA and birth outcomes ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) methodology to study the local labor market effects of trade shocks, specifically focusing on the China/NAFTA trade exposure context. It aligns perfectly with the empirical applications axis regarding trade shocks and their broader socioeconomic consequences, such as health outcomes, which is a key extension of the core literature. This paper investigates the relationship between regional exposure to trade liberalization under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and infant health outcomes in the U.S., focusing on differences in impact across areas with varying levels of import competition. I explore this question by implementing event studies and difference-in-difference regressions that compare birth outcomes of infants born in different years relative to NAFTA and localities with differential exposure to import competition. Using more than 88M birth records of Natality data, I find significant negative effects on a wide range of birth outcomes. The adverse effects are much larger for infants at the lower...	Hamid Noghanibehambari
9	2021	TRADE INDUCED MORTALITY ↗ This paper is a core application of the China shock literature, directly examining local labor market effects of import competition using a shift-share instrument based on Chinese export growth. It contributes to the project's empirical axis by investigating health outcomes and mortality, extending the standard focus on employment and wages in trade shock research. This paper evaluates the effect of increased trade on the mortality of workers in the manufacturing sector. We exploit the large increase of Chinese exports in the last two decades to assess its effect in two different countries, Italy and the US. Exploiting individual longitudinal data, we find that trade leads to an increased mortality rate among these populations, the effect being higher in Italy than in the US. A one billion dollar increase in imports leads to a 4 percent mortality increase in the US and up to 7 percent in Italy. We show that mortality patterns are different across occupational groups, with a more pronounced effect on blue-collar workers in the US and in Italy, a marked...	Jérôme Adda, Yarine Fawaz
9	2023	Labor markets and incarceration: The China shock to American punishment ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) instrumental variable design, specifically utilizing the 'China shock' exposure instrument based on local industry shares and national import shifts, to study labor market outcomes. It extends the core empirical application of trade shocks by examining the causal effect of job loss on incarceration rates, a key topic in the political and social polarization literature associated with the China shock. Abstract Studies have failed to show a positive effect of unemployment on incarceration despite reasons to expect such a relationship. We note that prior estimates have been muddied by the absence of substate data, a focus on prisons rather than on jails, limited measures of unemployment, and the fact that the health of the labor market is endogenous to incarceration. We instrument for local exposure to the rise of Chinese exports (“the China Shock”) to estimate the effect of job loss on American incarceration. Marshaling a new data set of prisoners and jail inmates by race at the commuting zone level, we show that negative shocks to local labor markets led to significant increases in total...	John Clegg, Adaner Usmani
9	2020	Impact of US market access on local labour markets in Vietnam ↗ This paper applies the shift-share instrumental variable framework to analyze the local labor market effects of international trade shocks in Vietnam, directly aligning with the project's trade shock and methodology axes. It examines how exposure to foreign demand shifts interacts with local industry composition to impact employment, offering relevant empirical context for the China shock and broader trade literature. Abstract This paper examines the impact of US market access on local labour markets in a developing country, Vietnam. Following the implementation of the Vietnam–United States bilateral trade agreement (BTA) in December 2001, manufacturing employment increased in provinces that were more exposed to US tariff cuts. In those provinces, employment also increased in many service sectors, reflecting strong spillovers of job gains. Among three potential channels of local job gain spillovers, namely, demand, production and real estate, the demand channel is the most important. The BTA is also found to reduce employment gaps, especially in manufacturing, between females and males, rural and urban...	Trung Xuan Hoang, Ha Nguyen
9	2019	The China effect: Evidence from data at firm level in Thailand ↗ This paper directly addresses the core empirical domain of the project by examining the local labor market and firm-level effects of the 'China shock' in an emerging market context. It aligns with the literature on import exposure, providing evidence on how such trade shocks influence employment, wages, and skill upgrading, which are central themes in the researcher's analysis of trade-induced structural changes. Abstract This study investigates how competition with Chinese imports affects firms in Thailand. Using World Bank data on Thailand and United Nations trade data from 2003 to 2006, the empirical results show that there is no significant impact of Chinese import competition on employment, wages, or labor income share. However, further checks show that for firms with lower productivity, the impact on employment and labor income share is more likely to be negative. The impact of Chinese import competition on profit margins is significantly positive. Considering the impact on labor income share and profit margins, we conclude that because of Chinese import competition, income distribution...	Yan Zhi, Di Bao, Changyuan Luo
9	2021	Labor Market Impacts of Import Penetration from China and Regional Trade Agreement Partners: The Case of Japan ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share instrumental variable framework to analyze the labor market impacts of import penetration, specifically focusing on the China shock within the Japanese context. It contributes to the empirical literature on trade shocks by distinguishing between MFN and RTA regimes, thereby addressing key mechanisms and identification strategies central to the project's trade shock axis. Many studies have investigated the impact of imports, especially those from China, on the domestic labor market. In this paper, we empirically examine the effects of not only imports from China but also those from regional trade agreement (RTA) partners on employment in Japan. To this end, we decomposed the total import penetration into the import penetration under the most favored nation (MFN) and RTA regimes. To address the endogeneity concern on our import penetration variables, we estimated our models by the instrumental variable method. As in previous studies in the literature, we found that the rise in import penetration from China significantly decreases employment in Japan. In...	Kazunobu Hayakawa, Tadashi Ito, Shujiro Urata
9	2021	Impacts of increased Chinese imports on Japan’s labor market ↗ This paper directly addresses the China shock literature by estimating the local labor market effects of import competition in Japan, mirroring the core empirical domain of the project. It utilizes the shift-share framework to isolate exposure to foreign shocks, aligning with the methodological and theoretical axes concerning trade-induced labor market dynamics. Using the Japanese firm/establishment-level census data, we investigate the impact of the Chinese import penetration on employment in Japan. We found negative impacts of the Chinese import penetration on total employment, especially in industries producing competing products to Chinese imports, and a positive impact of the import penetration in the industries from which firms purchase their inputs (upstream import penetration). The negative impacts are mainly driven by firms’ exit from the market while positive impacts are enjoyed by surviving firms. We did not find any significant impacts of the penetration in the industries to which firms sell their products (downstream penetration).	Kazunobu Hayakawa, Tadashi Ito, Shujiro Urata
9	2025	Warmth of the welcome: Immigration and local housing price dynamics ↗ This paper directly applies the Bartik instrument framework to the immigration domain, specifically constructing a shift-share instrument for county-level non-European immigration inflows. It extends the core empirical applications axis by examining the local housing market outcomes of immigration shocks, a key context for understanding the general equilibrium effects of population changes discussed in the project. Abstract We examine the impact of immigration on local housing price dynamics in the United States. Leveraging a newly developed instrument for US county‐level non‐European immigration, we find that immigration affects both county‐level housing price appreciation and within‐county spatial dispersion in housing price changes. Our estimates suggest that, on average, an immigration inflow equal to 1% of a county's initial population raises housing price appreciation by approximately 6.8 percentage points and lowers within‐county dispersion by about 1.5 percentage points. Importantly, these effects vary across counties and appear to be shaped by local attitudes toward immigrants. Using several...	Xun Bian, N. Edward Coulson, Xiaojin Sun
9	2024	Automation and Employment Over the Technology Life Cycle: Evidence from European Regions ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation/robots axis by employing a shift-share instrumental variable to estimate the labor market impacts of technology exposure in European regions. It aligns with the project's focus on task-based models and the methodological discussion of shift-share designs, specifically extending the Acemoglu & Restrepo framework by analyzing heterogeneous effects across technology life cycle phases. This paper analyzes how the impacts of ICT, Software & Databases, and Robots on European regional labor markets (1995–2017) vary across technology life cycle phases. Motivated by theories predicting shifting skill biases between early adoption and maturity, we first identify major technological breakthroughs and delineate their life cycle phases (early vs. maturity) based on investment growth patterns. Using a shift-share instrumental variable approach, we estimate phase-specific impacts of regional technology exposure on employment and wages. While confirming that effects differ significantly across phases, we find only partial support for standard skill-bias predictions during early...	Florencia Jaccoud, Fabien Petit, Tommaso Ciarli, et al.
9	2024	The effect of import competition across occupations ↗ This paper directly addresses the trade shock axis by applying a shift-share style occupational exposure index to estimate the effects of Chinese import competition on worker earnings. It aligns with the theoretical axis by utilizing task-based frameworks to analyze how industry-level trade shocks differentially affect occupations, extending the core methodology of the China shock literature. We empirically examine the effect of import competition on worker earnings across occupations. To guide our analysis, we develop a stylized model that emphasizes industries using occupations in different intensities. We show that an occupational exposure index summarizes the overall exposure of an occupation to industry-level trade shocks. Proxying these industry-level trade shocks with rising Chinese competition and using nationally representative matched employer–employee French panel data from 1993 through 2015, we obtain evidence consistent with the predictions of the model. We find that workers initially employed in occupations highly exposed to Chinese competition – as measured by our...	Sergi Basco, Maxime Liégey, Martí Mestieri, et al.
9	2021	Exposure of occupations to technologies of the fourth industrial revolution ↗ This paper constructs a patent-based exposure measure for occupations, directly addressing the theoretical axis of task-based models and technology shock indices central to the project. It provides a novel shift-share-like instrument based on patent-text-overlap, which aligns with the discussion of LLM and AI task-exposure measures and the methodological construction of occupational exposure indices. The fourth industrial revolution (4IR) is likely to have a substantial impact on the economy. Companies need to build up capabilities to implement new technologies, and automation may make some occupations obsolete. However, where, when, and how the change will happen remain to be determined. Robust empirical indicators of technological progress linked to occupations can help to illuminate this change. With this aim, we provide such an indicator based on patent data. Using natural language processing, we calculate patent exposure scores for more than 900 occupations, which represent the technological progress related to them. To provide a lens on the impact of the 4IR, we differentiate...	Benjamin Meindl, Morgan R. Frank, Joana Mendonça
9	2015	Immigrants' Effect on Native Workers: New Analysis on Longitudinal Data ↗ This paper is directly relevant as it addresses the immigration application axis of the project, specifically examining the labor market effects of immigration inflows on native workers. It employs a quasi-experimental identification strategy akin to shift-share designs by leveraging exogenous immigrant distribution policies to isolate supply shocks, a key methodological parallel to the Bartik instrument literature. Using longitudinal data on the universe of workers in Denmark during the period 1991-2008 we track the labor market outcomes of low skilled natives in response to an exogenous inflow of low skilled immigrants. We innovate on previous identification strategies by considering immigrants distributed across municipalities by a refugee dispersal policy in place between 1986 and 1998. We find that an increase in the supply of refugee-country immigrants pushed less educated native workers (especially the young and low-tenured ones) to pursue less manual-intensive occupations. As a result immigration had positive effects on native unskilled wages, employment and occupational mobility.	Mette Foged, Giovanni Peri
9	2024	Negative Weights Are No Concern in Design-Based Specifications ↗ This paper directly addresses methodological concerns regarding Bartik/shift-share instruments by demonstrating that negative weights in partially-linear regressions do not bias design-based estimands under specific conditions. It explicitly validates the robustness of shift-share instrument specifications, which are central to the researcher's project on identification frameworks and diagnostics. Recent work shows that popular partially-linear regression specifications can put negative weights on some treatment effects, potentially producing incorrectly-signed estimands. We show this is not an issue in design-based specifications, in which low-dimensional controls span the conditional expectation of the treatment. Specifically, the estimands of such specifications are convex averages of causal effects with ex-ante weights that average the potentially negative ex-post weights across possible treatment realizations. This result extends to design-based instrumental variable estimands under a first-stage monotonicity condition and applies to formula treatments and instruments such as...	Kirill Borusyak, Peter Hull
9	2022	The political effects of trade with Japan in the 1980s ↗ This paper is highly relevant as it directly applies the Bartik shift-share instrument to analyze the political polarization effects of import competition, a core empirical application within the China shock literature. It extends the foundational Autor et al. (2013) framework by isolating Japan-specific trade shocks, thereby contributing to the understanding of how trade exposure influences voting behavior and political outcomes. Abstract The 1974 trade act substantially increased the executive branch's authority in trade negotiations through the granting of fast‐track and Section 301 authority. This paper evaluates the effect on U.S. voting behavior resulting from trade with Japan over 1976–1992 time period. To capture U.S. trade exposures to Japan, we develop the Bartik index from Autor et al. (2013) for import competition with Japan and show that local exposure to import competition had statistically significant negative impacts on Republican presidential candidates over the 1976–1984 period. Although the second Reagan administration used Section 301 to open Japan's markets and Japanese firms shifted production...	Shuichiro Nishioka, Eric Olson
9	2024	Social Networks and Brexit: Evidence from a Trade Shock ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share design to the China shock literature, specifically investigating its impact on political polarization and Brexit support. It extends the core empirical framework by incorporating spatial spillovers via social networks, a key extension in modern trade shock analyses. Regional exposure to Chinese import competition has often been linked to support for the Leave option in the 2016 UK EU membership referendum. Looking at 143 harmonised International Territorial Level 3 (ITL3) regions covering England and Wales, and using data on the density of online social ties between them, I show that regional support for leaving the EU was also associated with exposure in socially connected regions. I first delineate 18 commuting zones based on interregional flows over three Census years. For each region, I then construct a measure of own exposure to Chinese import competition and a measure of exposure in a set of social neighbours located outside its commuting zone...	Andreas Mastrosavvas
9	2023	Identifying Chinese supply shocks: Effects of trade on labor markets ↗ This paper directly addresses the methodological foundations of the shift-share design by critically examining the exogeneity of shifts in the context of the China shock literature. It proposes an alternative identification strategy for export supply shocks that specifically aims to purge common demand shocks, thereby engaging with the core theoretical and empirical debates outlined in the project. Abstract An influential literature estimates the impact of trade on labor markets with shift‐share instrumental variable designs under the assumption that common demand shocks in advanced economies are negligible. This article documents empirical patterns, which suggest that such common demand shocks are prevalent. It then proposes a strategy that directly identifies country‐specific export supply shocks. Finally, it uses these supply shocks in reduced‐form regression, which suggest contractions of manufacturing employment that are larger than those in the seminal contribution by Autor et al. (American Economic Review, 2013, 103, 2121–2168).	Andreas M. Fischer, Philipp Herkenhoff, Philip Sauré
9	2025	Corporate AI play and short term skill-biased AI change ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis by employing a task-based model to explain skill-biased technological change via AI, which is the foundational mechanism underlying occupation-level shift-share designs. It provides empirical evidence on how firm-level AI exposure correlates with skill demand, offering relevant context for constructing and interpreting task-exposure instruments like those used in automation and AI literature. We develop a task-based model that illustrates how skill-bias emerges in firms, either because AI competes with lower skills and/or augments more complex jobs, while the extent of bias depends both on the corporate focus on efficiency/innovation and on AI performance scope across the whole range of firm tasks. Based on those predictions, we build an empirical model of skill change across 12 categories to assess whether, and how large, short term changes in skill labor demand correlates with firms use of AI technologies in their business, in the context of AI before genAI development. While AI is skill-biased in favor of more advanced skills, the effect of AI on skill demand is usually...	Jacques Bughin
9	2023	The dragon Down Under: the regional labour market impact of growth in Chinese imports to Australia ↗ This paper applies the shift-share instrumental variable design to analyze the labor market effects of the China shock in Australia, directly aligning with the project's trade shock axis. It utilizes industry-level import growth shares to predict local exposure, mirroring the core methodological structure and empirical context of the seminal 'China shock' literature. Manufactured imports from China to Australia grew 11-fold between 1991 and 2006. Local differences in industry structure are used to identify the impact of that growth on local labour market outcomes. This growth is estimated to have reduced local manufacturing employment considerably. Local adjustment occurred through labour mobility between regions plus increased rates of unemployment and non-participation. By contrast, import growth from other Asian countries had little impact on Australian manufacturing employment. This is because Chinese imports tended to be in sectors with slower growth in domestic consumption (absorption) and with high labour intensity.	Michael Coelli, James Maccarrone, Jeff Borland
9	2024	Unveiling the automation—wage inequality nexus within and across regions ↗ This paper directly addresses the project's automation axis by empirically testing the effects of robot adoption on wage inequality and employment, aligning with the Acemoglu & Restrepo (2020) framework. It utilizes a shift-share style design (regional robot diffusion) to analyze local labor market impacts, which is central to the methodological and empirical focuses of the research project. Abstract Since the1800s, automation technologies have been interpreted as a source of displacement effects, largely conceptualised and empirically proved in a vast literature. This paper claims that, despite their non-manufacturing nature, metropolitan regions are not exempted by the negative effects of automation on wage inequalities across workers’ groups. The paper empirically proves this statement by analysing the effects on jobs and wage differentials among groups of workers associated with the diffusion of robot technologies in Italian NUTS3 regions in the period 2012–2019. Results show that automation technologies in the form of robotisation do displace jobs, harming particularly...	Roberta Capello, Simona Ciappei, Camilla Lenzi
9	2024	Robots, occupations, and worker age: A production-unit analysis of employment ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation axis of the project by analyzing robot adoption effects using a task-based framework and occupation-level exposure measures. It provides key empirical evidence on how technology shocks differentially impact workers by task content and age, which is central to understanding the mechanisms behind shift-share instruments in the robotics literature. We analyze the impact of robot adoption on employment composition using novel micro data on robot use of German manufacturing plants linked with social security records and data on job tasks. Our task-based model predicts more favorable employment effects for the least routine-task intensive occupations and for young workers, the latter being better at adapting to change. An event-study analysis for robot adoption confirms both predictions. We do not find decreasing employment for any occupational or age group but churning among low-skilled workers rises sharply. We conclude that the displacement effect of robots is occupation-biased but age neutral whereas the reinstatement effect is...	Liuchun Deng, Steffen Müller, Verena Plümpe, et al.
9	2024	Migration and natives' inequality: Evidence from Italian local labor markets ↗ This paper directly addresses the immigration empirical applications axis by utilizing Card's classic shift-share instrumental variable to estimate the effects of immigration on native earnings inequality. It aligns with the project's focus on labor market outcomes and methodological debates surrounding identification strategies in immigration research. Abstract Using individual data from the Italian Labor Force Survey, we investigate the impact of immigration on the Gini index and the percentile ratio (p90/p10) at the household level within Labor Market Areas (LMAs) in Italy from 2008 to 2018. To identify the effect of immigration we construct a composite index based on demographic and occupation‐related characteristics that captures the degree of similarity between immigrants and natives across LMAs. This approach addresses the limitations of the standard cell segmentation method and allows us to estimate the impact of immigration on the entire distribution of natives' earnings. To address endogeneity concerns we use an instrument...	Giuseppina Gianfreda, Giovanna Vallanti
9	2021	On the Persistence of the China Shock ↗ This paper directly investigates the long-term persistence of the China shock, a core empirical application of the shift-share instrumental variable design in the trade literature. It extends the standard short-run analysis by documenting the enduring effects on employment, income, and migration over nearly two decades, thereby providing crucial evidence on the duration of local labor market adjustments to trade exposure. We evaluate the duration of the China trade shock and its impact on a wide range of outcomes over the period 2000 to 2019. The shock plateaued in 2010, enabling analysis of its effects for nearly a decade past its culmination. Adverse impacts of import competition on manufacturing employment, overall employment-population ratios, and income per capita in more trade-exposed U.S. commuting zones are present out to 2019. Over the full study period, greater import competition implies a reduction in the manufacturing employment-population ratio of 1.54 percentage points, which is 55% of the observed change in the value, and the absorption of 86% of this net job loss via a corresponding decrease...	David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon Hanson
9	2021	How Technological Change Affects Regional Electorates This paper directly addresses the automation/robots empirical application axis using shift-share instruments to study robot adoption and ICT investment effects, which are central to the project's scope. It also intersects with the theoretical axis by analyzing task-based employment shifts (routine vs. non-routine) and their political consequences, a key theme in the Autor-Dorn polarization literature. This paper challenges the common perception that automation and digitalization generally reduce employment and primarily result in political discontent. Drawing on fine-grained labor market data from West Germany and shift-share instruments combined with two-way fixed-effect panel models, we study how technological change affects regional electorates. We show that the expected decline in manufacturing and routine jobs in regions with higher robot adoption or higher investment in information and communication technology (ICT) was in fact more than compensated by parallel employment growth in the service sector and cognitive non-routine occupations. This change in the regional composition of...	Nikolas Schöll, Thomas Kurer
9	2024	Immigration's Effect on Us Wages and Employment Redux ↗ This paper is directly relevant as it employs a skill-based shift-share instrumental variable to estimate the causal impact of immigration on native wages and employment. It builds upon the foundational Card (2001) enclave instrument literature and provides updated evidence on complementarity and occupational upgrading, core topics in the immigration axis of the project. In this article we revive, extend and improve the approach used in a series of influential papers written in the 2000s to estimate how changes in the supply of immigrant workers affected natives' wages in the US. We begin by extending the analysis to include the more recent years 2000-2022. Additionally, we introduce three important improvements. First, we introduce an IV that uses a new skill-based shift-share for immigrants and the demographic evolution for natives, which we show passes validity tests and has reasonably strong power. Second, we provide estimates of the impact of immigration on the employment-population ratio of natives to test for crowding out at the national level...	Alessandro Caiumi, Giovanni Peri
9	2022	Computerization of White Collar Jobs ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) instrumental variable design to study the labor market effects of technological change in white-collar occupations, aligning perfectly with the project's theoretical axis on task-based models and automation. It utilizes national industry-level shifts weighted by local employment shares to identify causal impacts, mirroring the methodological core and empirical focus of the Acemoglu & Restrepo (2020) automation literature central to the researcher's project. We investigate the impact of computerization of white-collar jobs on wages and employment. Using online job postings from 2007 and 2010--2016 for office and administrative support (OAS) jobs, we show that when firms adopt new software at the job-title level they increase the skills required of job applicants. Furthermore, firms change the task content of such jobs, broadening them to include tasks associated with higher-skill office functions. We aggregate these patterns to the local labor-market level, instrumenting for local technology adoption with national measures. We find that a 1 standard deviation increase in OAS technology usage reduces employment in OAS occupations by about 1...	Marcus Dillender, Eliza Forsythe
9	2023	Design-Based Identification with Formula Instruments: A Review ↗ This paper provides a comprehensive review of the econometric tools and identification frameworks for shift-share (formula) instruments, directly aligning with the project's methodological axis. It explicitly discusses the design-based approach to shift-share instruments, which is central to the competing identification debates between shares-based and shifts-based interpretations. Many studies in economics use instruments or treatments which combine a set of exogenous shocks with other predetermined variables by a known formula. Examples include shift-share instruments and measures of social or spatial spillovers. We review recent econometric tools for this setting, which leverage the assignment process of the exogenous shocks and the structure of the formula for identification. We compare this design-based approach with conventional estimation strategies based on conditional unconfoundedness, and contrast it with alternative strategies that leverage a model for unobservables.	Kirill Borusyak, Peter Hull, Xavier Jaravel
9	2024	Negative Weights are No Concern in Design-Based Specifications ↗ This paper directly addresses the methodological concerns of shift-share (Bartik) instruments by providing a theoretical justification for design-based specifications, explicitly noting their applicability to shift-share instruments. It resolves a key debate regarding negative weights in two-stage least squares regressions, which is central to the validity of the identification frameworks discussed in the project's methodological axis. Recent work shows that popular partially-linear regression specifications can put negative weights on some treatment effects, potentially producing incorrectly-signed estimands. We counter by showing that negative weights are no problem in design-based specifications, in which low-dimensional controls span the conditional expectation of the treatment. Specifically, the estimands of such specifications are convex averages of causal effects with “ex-ante” weights that average the potentially negative “ex-post” weights across possible treatment realizations. This result extends to design-based instrumental variable estimands under a first-stage monotonicity condition, and applies to “formula”...	Kirill Borusyak, Peter Hull
9	2025	Places versus People: The Ins and Outs of Labor Market Adjustment to Globalization ↗ [Title only] The title directly addresses labor market adjustment to globalization, a central theme in the China shock and trade shock literature that relies heavily on shift-share (Bartik) instruments for identification. It likely examines the differential impacts on local labor markets (places) versus workers (people), aligning with key empirical applications and theoretical concerns regarding local versus aggregate effects in this research program. No abstract available.	David Autor, David Dorn, G. A. Hanson, et al.
9	2025	Places versus People: The Ins and Outs of Labor Market Adjustment to Globalization ↗ This paper directly addresses the core empirical domain of trade shocks, specifically the China shock, by analyzing local labor market adjustments using detailed administrative data. It complements the shift-share literature by providing granular evidence on the distinct dynamics between geographic recovery and worker outcomes, which is essential for understanding the partial-equilibrium effects central to the project. This chapter analyzes the distinct adjustment paths of U.S. labor markets (places) and U.S. workers (people) to increased Chinese import competition during the 2000s. Using comprehensive register data for 2000–2019, we document that employment levels more than fully rebound in trade-exposed places after 2010, while employment-to-population ratios remain depressed and manufacturing employment further atrophies. The adjustment of places to trade shocks is generational: affected areas recover primarily by adding workers to non-manufacturing who were below working age when the shock occurred. Entrants are disproportionately native-born Hispanics, foreign-born immigrants, women, and the...	David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon Hanson, et al.
9	2024	How do low-education immigrants adjust to Chinese import shocks? Evidence using English language proficiency ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) methodology to analyze the labor market impacts of Chinese import competition, a central topic in the China shock literature. It extends the standard trade shock framework by examining human capital adjustment (English proficiency) as a margin of immigrant response to local labor market shocks. This paper examines the link between trade-induced changes in local labor market opportunities and English language fluency rates among low-education immigrants in the United States. The production-based manufacturing jobs lost due to Chinese import competition around the turn of the century did not require strong English-speaking skills while many of the jobs in expanding industries, mostly in the service sector, did. Consistent with responses to these changing labor market opportunities, we find that a $1,000 increase in import exposure per worker in a local area led to an increase in the share of low-education immigrants speaking English very well in that area by about half a percentage...	Delia Furtado, Haiyang Kong
9	2023	Exporting unemployment? Assessing the impact of German import competition on regional manufacturing employment in France ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) instrumental variable design to analyze the local labor market effects of international trade shocks, mirroring the core methodology of the 'China shock' literature. It specifically examines the exclusion restriction and validity of foreign-shift instruments in a European context, which is central to the methodological axis of the project. This paper assesses the extent to which German import competition has contributed to the observed differential decline in manufacturing employment across French regions. The study employs an exposure research design that exploits differences in regional manufacturing specialisation across French départements combined with an instrumental variable strategy. The analysis does not establish a connection between German import competition and differential changes in regional French manufacturing employment. This result suggests that German import competition has neither driven nor halted the overall decline of French manufacturing employment. It also indicates that the sizeable and long-lasting...	Andreas Maschke
9	2025	Import Competition and Racial Disparities in Mortality: Evidence From the Japanese Trade Shock ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share instrumental variable design to study the health outcomes of trade shocks, specifically focusing on the 'China shock' literature's extension to mortality and racial disparities. It aligns perfectly with the project's empirical application axis on trade shocks and health impacts, utilizing the core methodological framework of foreign-shift Bartik instruments. This paper examines the effects of increased trade between Japan and the U.S. on mortality rates in the U.S. using a shift-share instrumental variables approach. Overall, we find that an increase in Japanese imports is associated with higher rates of cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality and lower rates of mortality from accidents. Effects of Japanese imports on deaths of despair are inconsistent, but there is a positive association between imports and drug-related deaths. These effects exhibit significant racial disparities. Specifically, a $1000 increase in import competition is associated with a 3.0% increase in CVD deaths per 100,000 Black individuals aged 20-64 years old, while there...	Pinka Chatterji, Chun‐Yu Ho, Quan Qi
9	2024	Replication of “How much does immigration boost innovation?” ↗ This paper directly addresses the methodological debate regarding the identifying assumptions of shift-share instruments, specifically contrasting the shares-based versus shifts-based frameworks central to the project. By applying new diagnostics to test the validity of a classic immigration instrument, it provides essential empirical context for understanding the robustness of such designs in the immigration application domain. Abstract Identifying the causal impact of immigration on outcomes commonly involves using a “shift‐share” or Bartik instrument, exploiting country‐specific immigration inflows (shifts) and location specific prior shares for the same countries. New findings suggest that identifying variation may come not from the shifts, as previously believed, but rather from the shares. In this paper, I first replicate Hunt and Gauthier‐Loiselle (HGL) who find skilled immigration increases innovation, and second employ new tests from the shift‐share literature. I find that the results of HGL replicate and hold up well to these new tests.	Taylor Wright
9	2025	Manufacturing automation and its implications for local employment outcomes: Evidence from Sweden ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share instrumental variable design to the automation domain, specifically addressing the core empirical application axis of robot adoption and its local labor market effects. It explicitly engages with the task-based and partial-equilibrium mechanisms central to the project, examining how automation shocks diffuse across and within local labor markets. This study examines the relationship between firm-level automation in manufacturing and local labor market employment outcomes using 2001-2022 Swedish linked employer-employee data. I utilize a shift-share instrumental variable approach and obtain robust results that automation affects employment both directly in automating firms and indirectly in nonautomating firms and nonmanufacturing firms. Firms that embrace automation experience employment growth. These gains come at the expense of employment losses in nonautomating firms and other sectors, as labor flows in response to the shift in labor demand. By introducing regional heterogeneous impacts, this study further shows that the effects...	Peter Njekwa Ryberg
9	2019	Relaxing the Exclusion Restriction in Shift-Share Instrumental Variable Estimation ↗ This paper directly addresses the methodological axis of the project by proposing methods to relax the strict exclusion restriction inherent in shift-share IV designs. It engages with the core tension between identifying assumptions and validity, specifically using applications central to the project such as immigration and the China shock. Many economic studies use shift-share instruments to estimate causal effects. Often, all shares need to fulfill an exclusion restriction, making the identifying assumption strict. This paper proposes to use methods that relax the exclusion restriction by selecting invalid shares. I apply the methods in simulations and two empirical examples: the effect of immigration on wages and of Chinese import exposure on employment. I find that weak instruments and strong violations of the exclusion restriction do not worsen the performance of the estimators. In both applications, the coefficients change considerably but this is reconcilable with the arguments made in the literature.	Nicolas Apfel
9	2021	ESSAYS ON TRADE POLICY AND LABOR MARKET EFFECTS OF THE CHINA TRADE SHOCK ↗ This thesis directly addresses the core empirical application of shift-share instruments by analyzing the labor market and political economy effects of the China trade shock in Brazil. It employs the standard Bartik-style IV strategy to identify causal impacts on wages, inequality, and trade policy, aligning perfectly with the project's focus on trade shock literature and methodological applications. This thesis consists of three chapters, all of which focus on the rise of China as a quasi-natural experiment in order to assess the effects of foreign trade shocks on the political economy of trade policy and on the dynamics of labor markets and earnings inequality in Brazil. In the first chapter, we use evidence on the differential exposure across local labor markets to this China shock in order to estimate its effect on Brazilian labor markets outcomes, in particular on measures of income inequality. First, we find that the export demand shock has decreased wage inequality in the tradables sector, mostly through the between-firms component of wage dispersion, and provide evidence that...	Flávio Lyrio Carneiro
9	2025	Impact of Technological Advances on Workers’ Health: Taking Robotics as an Example ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation/robots axis of the project by examining the effects of industrial robot adoption, consistent with the Acemoglu & Restrepo (2020) framework. It extends the literature by analyzing a new outcome variable—workers' health—thereby contributing to the empirical applications of shift-share designs in understanding the broader impacts of technology shocks on labor markets. Workers’ health is one of the key factors for sustainable economic development. In the new era of industrialization marked by the rise of automation, the impact of widespread robot use on workers’ health is a growing concern. We organize the robotics data released by the International Federation of Robotics to the prefecture and city level and further match them with the 2010–2015 China Comprehensive Social Survey database in the city–year dimension. Subsequently, we used fixed-order regression analysis with maximum likelihood estimation to explore the impact of robotics development on workers’ health indicators. Our findings reveal that the use of industrial robots generally improves...	Wenhao Yang, Changbiao Zhong, Siyi Wang, et al.
9	2025	Tasks at work: comparative advantage, technology and labor demand ↗ This paper provides the foundational theoretical framework for the task-based models that underpin the occupation-level shift-share instruments discussed in the project. It explicitly addresses the distinction between reduced-form partial equilibrium estimates and structural general equilibrium effects, which is identified as a unifying concern in the research agenda. This chapter reviews recent advances in the task model and shows how this framework can be put to work to understand trends in the labor market in recent decades. Production in each industry requires the completion of various tasks that can be assigned to workers with different skills or to capital. Factors of production have well-defined comparative advantage across tasks, which governs substitution patterns. Technological change can: (1) augment a specific labor type—e.g., increase the productivity of labor in tasks it is already performing; (2) augment capital; (3) automate work by enabling capital to perform tasks previously allocated to labor; (4) create new tasks. The task model...	Daron Acemoglu, Fredric Kong, Pascual Restrepo
9	2024	Household responses to trade shocks ↗ This paper directly addresses the China shock literature, a core empirical application of shift-share IV designs in the project. It investigates household-level labor supply responses to trade exposure, providing nuanced evidence on the local partial-equilibrium effects of import competition that the project aims to study. We study the impact of Chinese import competition in the 2000s on workers and their households in England and Wales. We document both the direct employment changes of individuals affected by trade exposure, as well as the employment response of individuals whose partner is exposed to trade. We find substantial differences by gender. Men respond to import competition by increasing labour force participation at older ages, and by moving into self-employment. This is true both in response to their own trade exposure, and as an 'added worker effect' when their partner is exposed to the shock. By contrast, we find no such response for women, who do not increase labour supply following shocks...	Aitor Irastorza-Fadrique, Peter Levell, Matthias Parey
9	2026	The labor market effect of generative artificial intelligence on artists ↗ This paper directly addresses the project's theoretical axis by applying an LLM task-exposure index, a specific variant of the occupation-level shift-share design discussed in the prompt. It empirically investigates the labor market effects of generative AI on artists, aligning with the project's interest in new technologies affecting task content and employment outcomes. Technological change has repeatedly disrupted creative labor markets, raising concerns about whether new tools substitute for artists or shift the organization of creative work. This paper studies how occupational exposure to generative AI (genAI) maps into employment and earnings outcomes for U.S. artists following the unanticipated release of ChatGPT. I combine an occupation-level LLM task exposure index with establishment-based occupational outcomes from the occupational employment and wage statistics and individual microdata from the American Community Survey, estimating event-study specifications that compare more versus less exposed artistic occupations from 2017 to 2024. Across...	Christos Makridis
9	2025	Benchmarking the Future of Work: Mapping AI Progress to Occupational Tasks ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis of the project by constructing an AI-capability exposure index mapped to occupational tasks, aligning with the task-based model and literature on technology exposure measures like those by Felten et al. and Eloundou et al. It provides a relevant methodological extension to the shift-share design by introducing a dynamic, benchmark-based approach to quantifying automation pressure on specific occupations. Artificial intelligence is advancing at a pace once thought unimaginable, yet we still lack clear tools to understand how these breakthroughs map onto the world of work and, in particular, how they shape an occupation’s exposure to AI. We introduce a new measure of an occupation’s exposure to AI that we call the Benchmark-based AI Occupational Exposure (BAIOE), that systematically links AI benchmark progress - the scoreboards that track frontier capabilities - to the occupational tasks that define human labor. Using O*NET tasks as a bridge, we connect benchmark trajectories across domains-including language, reasoning, vision, and multimodal tasks-to 52 human abilities, and translate these...	Kris Gulati
9	2015	Fringe Benefits and Import Competition This paper directly extends the core China shock literature by applying the standard Bartik instrument to analyze the impact of import competition on fringe benefits, a key component of total compensation. It addresses a specific empirical gap within the project's defined scope by refining estimates of local labor market effects beyond just wages and employment. In the United States fringe benefits are now more than 30% of compensation. While many studies have focused on the impact of trade with developing countries on U.S. wages, not much attention has been given to the impact of such trade on other components of compensation. But if trade affects the share of benefits in compensation, the studies which focus on wages and ignore fringe benefits likely give us biased estimates of the effect of trade on workers’ total compensation and consumption. I use data about individual workers’ fringe benefits from the NLSY79. I focus on workers who worked in manufacturing in 1991 and I follow them up to 2006. I then combine this individual level dataset with...	Tommaso Tempesti
9	2019	Comment ↗ This comment directly addresses the econometric validity of the shift-share (Bartik) instrument, specifically critiquing the identifying assumptions regarding industry shares as highlighted by Goldsmith-Pinkham, Sorkin, and Swift (2020). It also discusses the critical distinction between cross-sectional local partial-equilibrium effects and aggregate general-equilibrium implications, which is a central theoretical concern of the project. Previous articleNext article FreeCommentValerie A. RameyValerie A. RameyUniversity of California, San Diego, and NBER Search for more articles by this author University of California, San Diego, and NBERPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreIntroductionThis fine paper by Charles, Hurst, and Schwartz investigates the link between the post-2000 decline in manufacturing employment and the decline of the employment rate, and also analyzes the supporting roles played by transfer payments, geographic mobility, and opioid use. The paper is a particularly useful synthesis because it...	Valerie Ramey
9	2021	On the Persistence of the China Shock ↗ This paper is a core contribution to the China shock literature, directly applying the shift-share (Bartik) framework to analyze the long-term persistence of trade shock effects on US labor markets. It provides critical empirical evidence on the duration and magnitude of local labor market adjustments, which is central to understanding the partial-equilibrium impacts identified by the instrumental variable design. ABSTRACT:We evaluate the duration of the China trade shock and its impact on a wide range of outcomes over the period from 2000 to 2019. The shock plateaued in 2010, enabling analysis of its effects for nearly a decade past its culmination. Adverse impacts of import competition on manufacturing employment, overall employment-population ratios, and income per capita in more trade-exposed US commuting zones are present out to 2019. Over the full study period, greater import competition implies a reduction in the manufacturing employment-population ratio of 1.54 percentage points, which is 55 percent of the observed change in the value, and the absorption of 86 percent of this net job loss via...	David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon Hanson
9	2019	The Regional Impact of Economic Shocks: Why Immigration is Different from Import Competition This paper directly compares two core shift-share applications—immigration and trade shocks—addressing a central methodological concern regarding local absorption mechanisms. It provides critical context for understanding why shift-share instruments may yield different empirical outcomes based on local housing market conditions, which is key to interpreting partial-equilibrium results in Bartik designs. Prior literature has documented large and persistent employment effects in regions exposed to import competition, but non-lasting effects in locations receiving large immigrant waves. Import competition and immigration are comparable to the extent that imports are thought of as the labor embedded in imported goods. We explain this puzzle by arguing that a fundamental difference between trade and immigration is that whereas immigrants systematically enter metropolitan areas with high housing prices, import competition affects all kinds of local labor markets. We argue that when housing expenditure is decreasing as a share of income, internal migration is more responsive to local shocks in...	Christoph Albert, J. S.
9	2021	Import competition, regional divergence, and the rise of the skilled city ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) design to analyze the China shock, a core empirical application of the project. It investigates local labor market effects, specifically focusing on spatial divergence and skill polarization, which aligns with the trade shock and task-based model axes. This paper analyzes the contribution of import competition to the divergence among US metropolitan areas over recent decades. I document that the sharp rise of imports of Chinese manufacturing goods had a significant effect on the spatial skill polarization and the divergence of wages and skill premium among American cities. Although the average effect of the China shock on the spatial skill polarization and returns to skills was not significant, the effects were systematically different depending on the skill intensity of local services. Among highly educated cities, a higher exposure to import competition increases the collegeeducated workforce and the wages for skilled workers. I show...	Javier Quintana
9	2024	Strengthening Social Protection to Pave the Way for Technological Innovation: Evidence from the U.S. ↗ This paper is a direct extension of the Acemoglu and Restrepo (2020) automation literature, applying the core shift-share instrument to examine how local labor market outcomes are moderated by institutional factors. It addresses a key mechanism within the project's automation domain by analyzing the interaction between technological shock exposure and social safety nets, providing empirical evidence on the distributional effects of robot adoption. This paper investigates the impact of automation on the U.S. labor market from 2000 to 2007, specifically examining whether more generous social protection programs can mitigate negative effects. Following Acemoglu and Restrepo (2020), the study finds that areas with higher robot adoption reduced employment and wages, in particular for workers without collegue degree. Notably, the paper exploits differences in social protection generosity across states and finds that areas with more generous unemployment insurance (UI) alleviated the negative effects on wages, especially for less-skilled workers. The results suggest that UI allowed displaced workers to find better matches The findings...	Fernanda Brollo
9	2021	Tasks, Automation, and the Rise in Us Wage Inequality ↗ This paper is a foundational element of the theoretical axis, establishing the task-based framework that underpins occupation-level shift-share designs for automation. It directly informs the construction of task displacement indices used as Bartik instruments in the automation and polarization literature. We document that between 50% and 70% of changes in the U.S. wage structure over the last four decades are accounted for by relative wage declines of worker groups specialized in routine tasks in industries experiencing rapid automation. We develop a conceptual framework where tasks across industries are allocated to different types of labor and capital. Automation technologies expand the set of tasks performed by capital, displacing certain worker groups from jobs for which they have comparative advantage. This framework yields a simple equation linking wage changes of a demographic group to the task displacement it experiences. We report robust evidence in favor of this relationship and...	Daron Acemoğlu, Pascual Restrepo
9	2023	Skill-Biased Technical Change and Employment in U.S ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis of the project by utilizing a task-based model to decompose employment changes, explicitly linking labor-augmenting technology and skill-biased technical change to worker displacement. It also covers the empirical applications axis by analyzing the impacts of import penetration and automation susceptibility, which are core components of the shift-share literature discussed in the project scope. I propose a new method to decompose employment changes by skill type into changes caused by output, labor supply, production task concentration, and laboraugmenting technology, using market equilibrium conditions within a constant elasticity of substitution production framework. Studying manufacturing industries from 1990 to 2007, I find that labor-augmenting technology, by reducing labor per unit of output, is the leading source of displacement overall. However, a shift toward highskill tasks is even more important in displacing non-college workers, who represent a majority of employment. In applications, I explore the impacts of import penetration from China and susceptibility to...	Mary Kate Batistich
9	2020	De-routinization of Jobs and Polarization of Earnings â Evidence from 35 Countries This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis of the project by empirically testing the Routine-Biased Technological Change (RBTC) framework and its implications for job polarization across 35 countries. It provides crucial international context and evidence regarding the disconnect between occupational displacement and earnings polarization, which is central to understanding the labor market mechanisms underlying shift-share designs in the automation literature. The job polarization hypothesis suggests a U-shaped pattern of employment growth along the earnings/skill distribution, which is driven by simultaneous growth in the employment of high-skill/high-earnings and low-skill/low-earnings occupations due to Routine-Biased Technological Change (RBTC) [Acemoglu and Autor, 2011]. An aspect of both high social and political relevance is the implications of job polarization and technological change for earnings distributions. In this paper, we put the RBTC trend into perspective by decomposing earnings growth into parts attributable to job polarization and other components. Using a novel harmonized dataset provided by the Luxembourg Income Study and...	Maximilian Longmuir, Carsten Schröder, Matteo Targa
9	2013	Technical Change, Heterogeneity in Skill Demand, and Employment Polarization This paper provides foundational empirical evidence for the routinization hypothesis, which underpins the task-based theoretical axis of the project. It directly informs the occupation-level shift-share exposure measures used in automation and polarization literature by linking computer adoption to heterogeneous skill demand. We explore how the rapid adoption of computer-related assets affects the recent polarization of employment in the U.S. labor market, which is inconsistent with the skill-biased technological change hypothesis. Similar to Goos and Manning (2007), we show that the job polarization could be explained by the routinization hypothesisof Autor, Levy, and Murnane (2003). Our empirical analyses confirm that the newly adopted computer-related capitals change the demands\n\nfor three types of skilled workers heterogeneously, leading to a polarization\n\nin employment structure.	Sungmin Kim, Jin‐Tae Hwang
9	2020	The gendered effects of tariff liberalisation on local labour markets in post-apartheid South Africa This thesis explicitly employs the Bartik (shift-share) instrumental variable approach to estimate the causal effects of trade liberalization on local labor markets, directly aligning with the project's core methodological and empirical axes. It provides a relevant case study on trade shocks, utilizing industry composition shares to identify local exposure to tariff changes, which is central to the shift-share literature. This thesis uses South Africa as a case study to examine the gendered effects of tariff liberalisation on labour market outcomes at the local level. Specifically, the thesis focuses on the effect of tariff liberalisation on regional employment growth, labour adjustment in the manufacturing sector and services sector, and internal migration over a period (1996 to 2011) in which South Africa substantially reduced tariff protection. This was also a period corresponding with low employment growth and declines in the manufacturing share of employment that vary by gender and race as well as across regions. The experience of South Africa, therefore, presents a useful context to empirically...	Refilwe Lepelle
9	2022	Slicing the Pie: Quantifying the Aggregate and Distributional Effects of Trade ↗ This paper directly addresses the project's core concern regarding the distinction between local partial-equilibrium effects and aggregate general-equilibrium outcomes in the context of the China shock literature. It utilizes the specific empirical setting of trade exposure to quantify welfare effects, aligning closely with the methodological and theoretical axes of the research project. Abstract We develop a multi-sector gravity model with heterogeneous workers to quantify the aggregate and group-level welfare effects of trade. The model generalizes the specific-factors intuition to a setting with labour reallocation, leads to a parsimonious formula for the group-level welfare effects from trade, and nests the aggregate results in Arkolakis, Costinot and Rodríguez-Clare (2012, “New Trade Models, Same Old Gains?”, American Economic Review, 102, 94–130). We estimate the model using the structural relationship between China-shock driven changes in manufacturing employment and average earnings across US groups defined as commuting zones. We find that the China shock increases...	Simon Galle, Andrés Rodrı́guez-Clare, Moises Yi
9	2020	Non-random exposure to exogenous shocks: theory and applications ↗ This paper provides a foundational theoretical framework for shift-share instruments, directly addressing the identification challenges and inference methods central to the research project. It explicitly discusses the construction of shift-share instruments and offers diagnostic tools like specification tests and recentering, which align closely with the methodological axis of the project. We develop new tools for causal inference in settings where exogenous shocks affect the treatment status of multiple observations jointly, to different extents. In these settings researchers may construct treatments or instruments that combine the shocks with predetermined measures of shock exposure. Examples include measures of spillovers in social and transportation networks, simulated eligibility instruments, and shift-share instruments. We show that leveraging the exogeneity of shocks for identification generally requires a simple but nonstandard recentering, derived from the specification of counterfactual shocks that might as well have been realized. We further show how specification...	Kirill Borusyak, Peter Hull
9	2021	Employment and Drug-Related Mortality ↗ This paper directly applies the Bartik shift-share instrumental variable design to identify the causal effect of employment on mortality, aligning perfectly with the methodological focus of the project. It contributes to the empirical literature on local labor market shocks by utilizing the shift-share approach to address reverse causality, a key technique discussed in the project's core design. In the last two decades, there has been a downturn in labor force participation. One research approach to explain the downturn is death by despair—a recent topic in economics on pain and preventable deaths caused by alcohol, drugs and suicide. This thesis hopes to add to the death by despair literature by exploring the effect of employment on drug-related mortality through empirical investigation across 17 demographic groups—accounting for age, education, gender, and race—from 2011 to 2018, and covering all 50 US states along with the District of Columbia. Different estimations of population (demographic groups, gender and state total) are used to explore the subtleties for each demographic...	Trung Minh Pham
9	2022	Essays on Technological Change and Trade in Development Economics ↗ This dissertation directly applies the shift-share instrumental variable design to study the labor market effects of foreign automation shocks in Brazil, mirroring the core empirical applications in the trade and automation domains of the project. It specifically utilizes the 'foreign shift' variant and analyzes the resulting local exposure, aligning closely with the methodological and empirical axes of the research agenda. Diese Dissertation zeigt auf, wie sich Handel und technologischer Wandel auf nachhaltige wirtschaftliche Entwicklung auswirken können. Im ersten Kapitel wird untersucht, wie sich Automatisierungstechnologien im In- und Ausland auf Arbeitsmärkte eines Schwellenlandes auswirken. Regionen in Brasilien, die durch Handelsbeziehungen stärker von ausländischer Automatisierung betroffen sind, verzeichnen einen stärkeren Beschäftigungsrückgang im Industrie- und einen Anstieg der Beschäftigung im Bergbausektor. Diese Verschiebungen werden durch Veränderungen in der Nachfrage nach Exportgütern von diesen Regionen verursacht. Die Automatisierung im Inland hat geringere Auswirkungen, kommt aber höher...	Henry Stemmler
9	2022	The China Shock and Local Job Reallocation in Japan ↗ This paper directly applies the China shock empirical framework to analyze local labor market effects in Japan, a core domain of the project. It utilizes industry and region-level import shocks to examine job reallocation, aligning closely with the trade shock literature and local partial-equilibrium analysis central to the research agenda. This study investigates the characteristics of local manufacturing job reallocation in Japan induced by import shocks from China during 1996–2016. Three types of import shocks are considered: direct, upstream, and downstream. Industry- and region-level analyses both estimate that 28 percent of Japanese manufacturing job loss can be attributed to the direct import effect from China. The total import effect based on region-level analysis is much smaller, since the positive regional employment effect of downstream imports is considered. Three salient features about local job reallocation are observed. First, local import shocks encourage job reallocation in larger establishments while they...	Masahiro Endoh
9	2023	Does Fiscal Spending Affect TFP? Evidence from Chinese Provinces ↗ This paper directly applies the Bartik instrument to estimate the causal effect of fiscal spending, aligning perfectly with the project's empirical applications axis. It contributes to the literature on fiscal multipliers and local treatment intensity while addressing the distinction between partial and general equilibrium outcomes through its focus on TFP. Abstract This paper utilizes the Bartik instrument to examine the impact of provincial government spending on TFP growth in China. Our analysis reveals a noteworthy relationship: a 1% increase in provincial government spending variable over 2-year horizon would on average lead to a 0.85% increase in TFP growth during 2001–2009 and a 0.25% decrease during 2010–2018. This disparity can be attributed to the varying effects of fiscal spending on above-scale industrial enterprises, which are influenced by change in access to production factors and market power. JEL codes: H7, E6, O4, L1	Ying He, Li Zhan, Zitong Xu
9	2023	Design-based identification with formula instruments: A review ↗ This paper provides a comprehensive review of the econometric identification strategies for formula instruments, directly addressing the core methodological debate between the shares-based and shifts-based frameworks central to the researcher's project. It explicitly covers shift-share instruments and contrasts design-based approaches with alternative estimation strategies, serving as a foundational overview of the methodological axis. Many studies in economics use instruments or treatments which combine a set of exogenous shocks with other predetermined variables by a known formula.Examples include shift-share instruments and measures of social or spatial spillovers.We review recent econometric tools for this setting, which leverage the assignment process of the exogenous shocks and the structure of the formula for identification.We compare this design-based approach with conventional estimation strategies based on conditional unconfoundedness, and contrast it with alternative strategies that leverage a model for unobservables.	Kirill Borusyak, Peter Hull, Xavier Jaravel, et al.
9	2023	Import Trade Liberalization and Structural Transformation: Evidence from China ↗ This paper applies a Bartik-style shift-share design to study the structural transformation effects of trade liberalization in China, directly aligning with the project's core methodological and empirical axes. It utilizes local industrial composition shares and sector-specific tariff changes to identify causal impacts, mirroring the construction and application of instruments in the China shock literature. As part of the negotiation process to join the WTO, China’s average tariff rate on imports decreased from over 40 percent in 1992 to about 15 percent in 2000. I study how the tariff cuts fueled structural transformation leveraging spatial variation in exposure to the tariff cut across Chinese counties due to sectoral variations in the level of tariff cuts and variation in the industrial composition of the counties’ economies. Using input-output linkage across industries, I find that tariff cuts in upstream industries significantly reduced measured input costs in counties that specialized in downstream industries. The decreases in measured input costs significantly increased employment in...	hundanol atnafu kebede
9	2024	Shift-Share Instruments Under Imperfect Substitution ↗ This paper directly addresses the methodological foundations of the Shift-Share IV design by examining identification validity under imperfect substitution, a key extension of the core frameworks discussed in the project. It provides critical theoretical refinements and practical diagnostics for the canonical setting and the China shock application, which are central to the project's empirical and theoretical axes. Existing identification for the Shift-Share Instruments (SSIV) assumes perfect substitution across factors. This paper examines the SSIV validity in a context where industries vary in factor intensities. I argue that the previously established identifying conditions are no longer sufficient, and identification requires an additional moment restriction. To address this issue, I propose a simple re-centered SSIV approach that restores identification in this setting. I apply this approach to explore two empirical contexts: the canonical setting and the local effects of the China shock. My findings reveal that compressing variation in factor intensities contaminates estimates in the canonical...	Chen Liu
9	2025	Exporting Education Services and Local Economic Consequences ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) instrumental variable framework to analyze the local economic consequences of service exports, aligning with the project's methodological focus. It demonstrates the design's utility in isolating supply-driven shocks from local demand conditions within a specific sector, mirroring the structure of the trade shock and fiscal policy applications studied in the project. <div> <div> <div> The United States exports educational services to around 1 million foreign students who contribute $50 billion in consumption per year. This paper estimates the local economic effects of education service provision on job creation, business formation, output, and housing markets. Using a shift-share instrument, I find that commuting zones more exposed to education-service exports experience substantial gains in GDP, employment, and business entry. The large relative employment gains are concentrated in universities and local non-tradable sectors, particularly among U.S.-born workers, and are driven by in-migration workers. Housing markets adjust through rental growth in...	Chen Liu
9	2025	How Did American Voters Respond to the 2018 Trade War? ↗ [Title only] This paper likely employs a shift-share design to analyze the local economic impacts of trade policy, directly connecting to the China shock literature and political polarization outcomes. It fits the core project by examining how trade-induced shocks influenced voter behavior, a key application of the methodological framework. No abstract available.	Sang Hoon Kong
9	2025	The hidden costs of automation: does robot adoption affect children’s mental health? ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share instrumental variable design to study robot adoption, aligning with the project's core focus on automation and its labor market consequences. It utilizes a foreign-shift variant (using U.S. robot data) to identify local treatment intensity, fitting the methodological and empirical axes of the research project. Introduction: Industrial automation is profoundly transforming the labor market, yet it may also impose hidden costs beyond economic outcomes. In particular, heightened labor market competition caused by robot adoption may create intergenerational costs, such as adverse effects on children's mental health. Methods: This study combines survey data from the 2012-2020 China Family Panel Studies with robot data from the International Federation of Robotics to investigate the impact of automation on the mental health of Chinese children. To address endogeneity concerns, we construct an instrumental variable for domestic robot adoption using U.S. robot data and employ a two-stage least squares...	Y. C. Zou, Jiaxin Wang, Liang Wang
9	2025	How Local Economies Recover from Manufacturing Job Loss: The Case of China Shock ↗ [Title only] This paper directly addresses the China shock literature, a core empirical application of the shift-share instrumental variable design in trade economics. It focuses on local labor market outcomes following import competition shocks, which aligns perfectly with the project's investigation into how Bartik instruments identify local partial-equilibrium effects. No abstract available.	Chen Liu
9	2025	Producing more, reproducing less: The demographic costs of China's export success ↗ This paper directly employs the shift-share instrumental variable design to estimate the causal effects of an economic shock (export growth) on a specific outcome, aligning perfectly with the project's methodological focus on Bartik IVs. It also contributes to the broader literature on how economic shocks reshape demographic and social behaviors, which is a key application domain of the research. This study investigates the impact of export growth on fertility, coinciding with the abolition of the One-child Policy and subsequent relaxation of birth control policies in China. Using micro-level survey data, we employ a shift-share instrumental variables strategy to examine the causal effects. Our analysis reveals that married women residing in prefectures with greater export growth are significantly less likely to give birth. Additional analysis shows that export growth raises married women's wages, thereby increasing the opportunity cost of fertility and shifting household resource allocation by reducing maternal time devoted to childcare while boosting monetary investment in...	Yumeng Yang, Yunong Li, Han Sheng, et al.
9	2026	Revisiting US food aid and civil conflict ↗ This paper provides a direct methodological critique of the Bartik instrument's identification assumptions, specifically addressing the normalization of shares as highlighted by Goldsmith-Pinkham, Sorkin, and Swift (2020). It serves as a key case study for understanding how local demand or structural confounders can invalidate shift-share instruments when shares do not sum to one. Nunn and Qian (Am Econ Rev 104:1630–1666, 2014) find that an increase in US food aid increases the incidence of civil conflicts. However, their identification strategy (based on shift-share instrumentation) is invalid because the shares used to construct the shift-share instrument do not add up to one. Even when the shifts are exogenous, countries with larger shares systematically have higher values of the instrument, introducing bias if these countries have different unobservables that affect conflict. The exogeneity of the instrument can be restored by adding a sum of shares control interacted with year fixed effects. In Nunn and Qian (Am Econ Rev 104:1630–1666, 2014), the sum of shares...	Sébastien Mary
9	2023	Robots, Exports and Top Income Inequality Evidence for the U.S. ↗ [Title only] This paper directly addresses the automation axis of the project by examining the link between robot adoption and income inequality, likely utilizing shift-share or similar exposure instruments. It connects core empirical applications (robots) with broader distributional outcomes, fitting the task-based model framework central to the research agenda. No abstract available.	Andrés César, Guillermo Falcone, Pablo Garriga
9	2025	The Impact of Job Exposure to Artificial Intelligence on the Korean Labor Market in 2020 ↗ [Title only] This paper directly applies the task-based exposure methodology to measure AI's impact on jobs, fitting squarely within the theoretical axis regarding occupation-level exposure indices and modern AI-capability measures. It extends the established literature on automation and task exposure to a new context (Korea, 2020), aligning with the project's interest in how technology shocks affect labor markets through differential task exposure. No abstract available.	Yeseul Lee, Hyeonjun Hwang
9	2026	How artificial intelligence penetration affects workers’ job quality? Empirical evidence from China ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical and empirical axes of the project by employing a Bartik instrumental variable approach to measure AI penetration, a key modern extension of the occupation-level exposure indices discussed. It specifically engages with the task-based model framework by examining how AI affects job quality and non-cognitive skills, aligning closely with the literature on automation and technological change. Artificial intelligence (AI) has evolved to play a transformative role in reshaping labor market patterns, altering how individuals work and the tasks they perform. The study investigates how AI penetration influences workers’ job quality and explores the underlying mechanism of this effect. To more accurately capture the extent of AI application, we establish a measure of AI penetration by applying natural language processing (NLP) techniques in combination with the Bartik instrumental variable approach. Job quality is measured using a multidimensional index. Employing nationally representative data from the China Family Panel Studies, we find that AI penetration significantly improves job...	Yafeng Nie, Kaiyun Xue
9	2026	Toward Sustainable Workforce Development: How AI Reshapes Skill Demand Structure—Evidence from 67 Million Job Postings in China ↗ This paper directly applies the task-based framework and patent-text-overlap exposure measures central to the project's theoretical and methodological axes to assess AI's impact on skill demand. It aligns closely with the research focus on automation and occupational task exposure by constructing industry-level exposure indices and analyzing their effects on employment structures in a major economy. How artificial intelligence (AI) reshapes the internal structure of firm-level skill demand remains largely uncharted. Using approximately 67 million online job postings from two major Chinese recruitment platforms (2019–2024), we construct firm-by-year potential AI exposure via semantic matching between AI patent texts and detailed occupation task descriptions, decompose exposure into displacement and augmentation components based on task routineness, and measure four skill-category demand shares and their within-category importance from job-description text, with identification from within-firm variation under firm and city-by-year fixed effects. Displacement and augmentation exposure...	Ling Zhang, Chenglei Zhang
9	2021	Effects of Chinese Import Competition on Self-employed Business Owners in the U.S. ↗ This paper is a core contribution to the China shock literature, directly applying the shift-share (Bartik) IV design to examine the effects of import competition on self-employment. It extends the standard empirical applications of the method by analyzing labor market dynamics beyond traditional wage and employment outcomes for wage workers. Exploiting variation in exposure to Chinese import growth across local markets, I investigate the effects of import competition on self‐employment in the US. The China trade shock had a sizable negative impact on incorporated self‐employed business owners (i.e., entrepreneurs) in manufacturing. The reduction in entrepreneurs also significantly contributed to the decline in total manufacturing employment. The analysis also indicates that other sectors have not absorbed entrepreneurs released from manufacturing. Finally, the effects on entrepreneurship are similar across different demographic groups characterized by gender, age, and education.	Bulent Unel
9	2023	China Shock and Female Labor Market Participation in Brazil ↗ This paper applies the shift-share (Bartik) instrumental variable design to the 'China shock' literature, directly aligning with the project's empirical focus on trade-induced local labor market effects. It specifically investigates the gendered impacts of import competition on female labor market participation and wages, extending the standard application of this methodology. Brazil was a successful case of economic growth based on import substitution. Recently, with the China shock, the country’s economy has been exposed to greater competition. In a similar period, an increase of 12 percent in the proportion of formalized female workerstook place in the Brazilian labor market. This paper explores the variation of China Shock between Brazilian local labor markets (or microregions) to identify whether the expansion of Chinese participation in international trade was able to improve the women’s conditions in the Brazilian labor market between 2000 and 2013 measured by the proportion of women formalized, and the wage ratio of female to male workers. It is the first...	Juliana Cristofani, Ana Claudia Polato e Fava, Mônica Yukie Kuwahara
9	2025	Effects of Chinese Import Competition on Self‐Employed Business Owners in the <scp>US</scp> ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) design to analyze the local labor market effects of the China trade shock, a core empirical application of the project. It investigates the impact of import competition on self-employment, extending the standard trade shock literature to firm dynamics and entrepreneurship outcomes. ABSTRACT Exploiting variation in exposure to Chinese import growth across local markets, I investigate the effects of import competition on self‐employment in the US. The China trade shock had a sizable negative impact on incorporated self‐employed business owners (i.e., entrepreneurs) in manufacturing. The reduction in entrepreneurs also significantly contributed to the decline in total manufacturing employment. The analysis also indicates that other sectors have not absorbed entrepreneurs released from manufacturing. Finally, the effects on entrepreneurship are similar across different demographic groups characterized by gender, age, and education.	Bulent Unel
9	2025	The Health Consequences of Export Slowdown ↗ This paper directly addresses the 'China shock' application of the shift-share design, utilizing the core methodological framework to analyze the health consequences of trade exposure. It aligns perfectly with the project's empirical focus on local labor market effects, specifically extending the literature to include mental health outcomes and interaction with workplace automation. This paper examines the mental health consequences of China’s export slowdown from 2010 to 2016. Using nationally representative individual-level panel data and a shift-share instrument for city-level export exposure, we find that export slowdown significantly increased psychological distress. The effects are most pronounced in regions with high concentrations of migrant workers and among middle-aged, less-educated individuals, low-skilled manufacturing workers, and married women. We document that labor market disruptions—falling wages, longer work hours, and reduced job satisfaction—are key transmission channels. Trade-induced economic stress also distorts self-perceived health...	Chuan He, Yuting Li, Hong Ma, et al.
9	2025	When Trade and Immigration Shocks Collide: A Perfect Storm for Labor Market Outcomes? ↗ [Title only] This title strongly suggests an intersectional analysis of two core shift-share domains (trade and immigration), likely employing Bartik instruments to examine their combined effects on labor markets. The 'perfect storm' phrasing implies a focus on additive or interactive shocks, which is central to the methodological debate on identifying independent versus correlated shift-share instruments. No abstract available.	Nicolò Gatti
9	2026	Tariffs, taxes and wages in the age of artificial intelligence ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis concerning the task-based model and AI capability indices, extending the framework to include open economy dynamics and policy interventions like tariffs and AI taxes. It aligns with the project's interest in how technology shocks affect labor market outcomes and wage inequality through task exposure. Abstract We formulate a model of an open economy with three final goods sectors, one of which uses a continuum of tasks as inputs. Skilled labor or artificial intelligence (AI), which is produced using skilled labor and capital, can conduct these tasks. We explore the effects of technical progress in AI, showing how AI competes with skilled labor in tasks and the consequences for wage inequality and the skill premium. We consider the effectiveness of trade tariffs and a direct AI tax to counter negative impacts of advancements in AI technology on the range of tasks performed by skilled labor.	J. Gilbert, Onur A. Koska, Reza Oladi
9	2025	Generative AI, Adoption, and the Structure of Tasks ↗ This paper directly addresses the project's theoretical axis on task-based models by analyzing how generative AI alters task exposure and adoption incentives, extending the logic of previous automation literature to LLMs. It discusses occupation-level transformation and worker displacement, which are central to the shift-share instrument applications in the automation and technology domains. Abstract This chapter deals with the intersection of economics and technology and how they may shape the decision to adopt generative artificial intelligence (genAI). From the firm perspective, we discuss characteristics that make genAI different from past technologies, such as reduced changeover costs and reduced sensitivity to variability. We argue that, compared with past automation, these characteristics may spur adoption in tasks that are less frequent within an organization or more complex. We explore incentives for workers to adopt genAI: if genAI tends to augment less-skilled workers, workers with greater ability to critically evaluate the outputs of genAI may not have an incentive...	Ramayya Krishnan, Laurence Ales, Christophe Combemale
9	2026	Automation in the Wake of GenAI: Implications for Firm Training ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis concerning AI-capability indices and task-exposure measures, specifically examining how GenAI automation affects labor market dynamics in routine-intensive occupations. It extends the automation literature by providing experimental evidence on firm-level training responses, which is a key mechanism in understanding the downstream labor market implications of technology shocks central to the project's focus. Generative AI (GenAI) adoption is spreading rapidly and reshaping work, yet its implications for firms’ training decisions remain largely unexplored. This paper examines how automation in the post-GenAI era affects firms’ entry-level training positions using a vignette experiment with recruiters at over 2,800 Swiss firms, covering more than 100 distinct occupations. Firms plan to reduce training positions in response to automation prospects, with larger reductions the greater the expected automated task share and the earlier the expected implementation. Effects are markedly stronger in routine-intensive and AI-exposed occupations, as well as among large firms. Our experiment allows us to...	Claudio Schilter, Christian Gschwendt
9	2025	The Impact of Refugees on House Prices in European Countries ↗ This paper directly applies the Bartik-style shift-share instrumental variable framework to study immigration inflows, aligning with the project's core methodological and empirical axes. It utilizes the classic shift-share design combining local settlement shares with origin-country supply shocks to identify the causal effect of refugees, mirroring the structure of the Card (2001) and China shock literature discussed in the project. This paper investigates the causal impact of refugee inflows on housing prices across European countries following the 2015–16 asylum shock. Using a panel of 27 European countries from 2010 to 2023, we combine UNHCR data on refugees per 1,000 residents with Eurostat’s harmonized House Price Index (HPI). Baseline two-way fixed-effects models show that contemporaneous refugee growth is positively associated with housing price growth, while lagged inflows have a negative effect, consistent with short-run demand pressure followed by market adjustment. However, these correlations may be driven by endogenous refugee sorting into stronger housing markets. To address this, we implement a...	Muhammad Usman Anwar Goraya, Ahmed Albarqi, Sarthak Gulati
9	2026	Investing in Rural Places: The Impact of USDA Rural Development Programs on Migration Patterns ↗ This paper directly applies the Bartik shift-share instrumental variable framework to estimate the causal effects of government spending on migration, aligning perfectly with the project's empirical applications axis regarding fiscal policy. It also utilizes IV quantile regression to explore heterogeneity, offering methodological insights relevant to the project's focus on identifying local partial-equilibrium effects of exogenous spending shocks. This study examines the effects of USDA Rural Development (RD) investments on migration outcomes in rural counties in the United States from 2004 to 2021, focusing on the mechanisms through which place‑based spending affects rural population dynamics. Using an instrumental‑variables strategy that leverages a Bartik shift–share instrument, we estimate both mean and quantile treatment effects. The results show that RD investments increase net migration primarily through two channels: housing programs reduce out‑migration and raise non‑migration, while non‑housing programs modestly increase in‑migration. Instrumental variable quantile regressions reveal that the retention effects are...	Anil Rupasingha, Ephraim Nkonya, Kasey Martin
9	2025	The Impact of Refugees on House Prices in European Countries ↗ This paper directly applies the Bartik-style shift-share instrumental variable design to study the impact of migration, fitting squarely within the immigration application axis of the project. It explicitly addresses the core methodological framework by constructing an instrument from pre-crisis settlement patterns and origin-country supply shocks, which is central to the research topic. This paper investigates the causal impact of refugee inflows on housing prices across European countries following the 2015–16 asylum shock. Using a panel of 27 European countries from 2010 to 2023, we combine UNHCR data on refugees per 1,000 residents with Eurostat’s harmonized House Price Index (HPI). Baseline two-way fixed-effects models show that contemporaneous refugee growth is positively associated with housing price growth, while lagged inflows have a negative effect, consistent with short-run demand pressure followed by market adjustment. However, these correlations may be driven by endogenous refugee sorting into stronger housing markets. To address this, we implement a...	Muhammad Usman Anwar Goraya, Ahmed Albarqi, Sarthak Gulati
9	2019	Comment ↗ This comment directly engages with the Bartik (shift-share) instrumental variable design used to identify local labor demand shocks from manufacturing decline, a core methodological component of the project. It critically evaluates the identification strategy in the context of the China shock and automation literature, discussing key empirical findings and methodological nuances such as measurement error and geographic mobility. Previous articleNext article FreeCommentLawrence F. KatzLawrence F. KatzHarvard University and NBER Search for more articles by this author Harvard University and NBERPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreKerwin Kofi Charles, Erik Hurst, and Mariel Schwartz provide an insightful and comprehensive empirical examination of the link between the transformation of the US manufacturing sector and the substantial decline in the employment rates and average annual hours worked of prime-age adults (those aged 21–55), especially men and less educated women, since 2000. Charles et al...	Lawrence F. Katz
9	2025	Aggregating Trade Shocks: From Local Labor Markets to National Outcomes This paper directly addresses the core methodological concern of bridging local partial-equilibrium effects to aggregate general-equilibrium outcomes in shift-share designs. It explicitly engages with the 'China shock' literature and the debate surrounding the Autor et al. (2013) findings, offering a spatial IV approach that accounts for inter-regional spillovers and input-output linkages. We leverage a novel spatial IV approach to develop a reduced-form estimator that maps local trade shocks into aggregate outcomes, accounting for inter-regional spillovers. For the China shock in the U.S., we find strong evidence for employment spillovers at the local level, which appear to propagate through input-output linkages rather than labor mobility. They shift the shock’s employment ramifications away from the Pacific and North Atlantic towards the South Atlantic region. For aggregate employment, our model rationalizes the 30% difference between Autor et al. (2013) and the structural follow-up literature but implies that it is insignificant from a statistical standpoint.	Koller, Julian, Stefanova, Stefani
9	2016	The Impact of Chinese Import Competition on the Local Structure of Employment and Wages: Evidence from France This paper directly addresses the core trade shock application of the shift-share design by estimating the local labor market effects of Chinese import competition in France. It provides empirical evidence on spill-over effects and wage polarization, which are central themes in the China shock literature and the project's theoretical axis on task-based models and polarization. The rapid rise of Chinese exports over the past two decades has raised concerns about manufacturing jobs and wage inequality in high-income countries. Spill-overs beyond the manufacturing sector are an important issue given the large size of the non-traded sector in modern economies as well as the imperfect spatial mobility of households. In this paper, I estimate the impact of Chinese import competition onto the structure of employment and wages of local labor markets in France, with an emphasis on spill-overs effects beyond manufacturing and the degree of local wage inequality. Local employment and total labor income in both manufacturing and non-manufacturing are negatively affected by...	Clément Malgouyres
9	2022	Import Competition and Informal Employment: Empirical Evidence from China ↗ This paper is a direct empirical application of the shift-share design to study the labor market effects of trade shocks in China, aligning with the core 'China shock' literature and the project's focus on local labor market responses to import competition. It extends the standard outcomes (employment, wages) to the formal-informal margin, providing valuable context for understanding adjustment mechanisms under trade exposure. This paper investigates the effects of trade liberalisation induced labour demand shocks on informal employment in China. We employ a local labour market approach to construct a regional measure of exposure to import tariffs and then link it with the employment status of individuals and the share of informal employment within firms. Using three waves of household survey data between 1995 and 2007, we find that workers from regions that experienced a larger tariff cut were more likely to be employed informally. Further results based on firm-level data reveal a consistent pattern; tariff reductions increased the share of informal workers within firms. Such effect is more salient among smaller...	Feicheng Wang, Zhe Liang, Hartmut Lehmann
9	2021	Import Competition and Informal Employment: Empirical Evidence from China ↗ This paper directly employs a shift-share (Bartik) methodology to measure local exposure to trade shocks, aligning perfectly with the core instrumental variable design described in the project. It contributes to the 'China shock' literature by investigating informal employment responses, which expands the empirical applications axis beyond traditional formal labor market outcomes. This paper investigates the effects of trade liberalisation induced labour demand shocks on informal employment in China. We employ a local labour market approach to construct a regional measure of exposure to import tariffs by exploiting initial differences in industrial composition across prefectural cities and then link it with the employment status of individuals. Using three waves of household survey data between 1995 and 2007, our results show that workers from regions that experienced a larger tariff cut were more likely to be employed informally. Further results based on firm-level data reveal a consistent pattern; tariff reductions increased the share of informal workers within...	Feicheng Wang, Zhe Liang, Hartmut Lehmann
9	2020	Import Competition and Gender Differences in Labor Reallocation This paper directly applies the shift-share instrumental variable design to study the labor market effects of import competition, specifically examining gender disparities in response to the China shock. It aligns with the project's core empirical domain on trade shocks and local labor market dynamics while extending the analysis to include detailed worker-level outcomes and frictions. We study gender differences in the labor market reallocation of Peruvian workers in response to trade liberalization. The empirical strategy relies on variation in import competition across local labor markets based on their industrial composition before China entered the global market in 2001. We find that exposure to Chinese imports led to short-run declines in the employment share of women and men. However, the adverse employment effects are only persistent for women, leading to a reduction in their labor force participation. Lack of job market opportunities in the non-tradable sector act as a significant friction that prevents women from fully offsetting trade-induced displacements.	Hani Mansour, Pamela S. Medina, Andrea Velásquez
9	2023	When Women's Work Disappears: Marriage and Fertility Decisions in Peru ↗ This paper directly applies the core shift-share (Bartik) instrumental variable design to the China shock literature by constructing local labor market exposure to import competition using baseline industry shares. It extends the empirical applications axis by examining the gendered demographic consequences of trade shocks, specifically marriage and fertility decisions, which adds depth to the understanding of local labor market effects. Abstract This paper studies the gendered labor market and demographic effects of trade liberalization in Peru. To identify these effects, we use variation in the exposure of local labor markets to import competition from China based on their baseline industrial composition. On average, the increase in Chinese imports during 1998–2008 led to a persistent decline in the employment share of low-educated female workers but had smaller and transitory effects on the employment of low-educated men. In contrast to the predictions of Becker’s model of household specialization, we find that the increase in import competition during this period increased the share of single low-educated people and...	Hani Mansour, Pamela Medina, Andrea Velásquez
9	2026	The Impact of Import Competition on Domestic Outsourcing in U.S. Manufacturing ↗ This paper directly employs the shift-share (Bartik) instrumental variable design to estimate the local labor market effects of import competition, a core component of the project's trade shock literature. It specifically investigates firm dynamics and outsourcing responses to China-like trade shocks, aligning closely with the empirical applications and methodological focus on purging local demand variation. This paper examines the effect of intensified import competition on domestic outsourcing in U.S. manufacturing, focusing on cleaning and security jobs. To exploit variation in import penetration across industries and local labor markets, I measure domestic outsourcing at the three-digit Census industry and commuting zone levels using data from the Decennial Censuses and the American Community Survey. Using an instrumental variable strategy that isolates supply-driven variation in import penetration in the United States over three periods (1980–1990, 1990–2000, and 2000–2010), I find that greater exposure to import competition significantly increased domestic outsourcing of cleaning and...	Nayeon Lim
9	2025	The Globalization, Not China, Syndrome and its Implications for Autor, Dorn and Hanson ↗ This paper directly critiques the identification strategy of the seminal ADH (2013) China shock study, which is a central pillar of the project's trade shock and shift-share instrumental variable framework. It specifically addresses the exclusion restriction and the 'foreign shift' variant, arguing that the Bartik instrument is biased by correlated shocks from other countries, a key methodological concern for this research project. In a seminal article entitled "The China Syndrome: Local Labor Market Effects of Import Competition in the United States" David Autor, David Dorn and Gordon Hanson (ADH, 2013) estimated the effect of imports of manufactured goods from China from 1990 to 2007 on employment and wages in the USA. The authors concluded that imports from China reduced manufacturing employment and lowered wages of workers in non-manufacturing industries. In this article, I argue that the conceptual model used in ADH is misspecified because Chinese imports represent only a fraction of all imports and are correlated with imports from other countries. A correctly specified model would use total imports or imports...	Robert Kaestner
9	2024	Worker Reallocation Barriers and the Impact of Import Competition on Gender Income Inequality ↗ [Title only] This paper directly addresses the China shock literature, a core empirical application of the shift-share design, by analyzing the gendered consequences of import competition. Its focus on worker reallocation barriers and inequality provides critical micro-foundations and distributional insights relevant to the labor market effects typically estimated using Bartik instruments. No abstract available.	Leandro Freylejer, Liam Kelly
9	2017	U.S. Job Flows and the China Shock This paper directly investigates the labor market impacts of the China shock using the core shift-share methodology and commuting-zone data central to the project's trade shock literature. It provides critical empirical evidence on establishment-level job flows and reallocation mechanisms, which are key components of the theoretical and empirical analysis of local labor market responses to trade exposure. International trade exposure affects job creation and destruction along the intensive margin (job flows due to expansions and contractions of firms' employment) as well as along the extensive margin (job flows due to births and deaths of firms). This paper uses 1992-2011 employment data from the {universe} of U.S. establishments to construct job flows at both the industry and commuting-zone levels, and then estimates the impact of the `China shock' on each job-flow type. The China shock is accounted for by either the increase in Chinese import penetration in the U.S., or by the U.S. policy change that granted Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) status to China. We find that the China...	Brian J. Asquith, Sanjana Goswami, David Neumark, et al.
9	2026	Automation Adoption and Monopsony Power: Evidence from Chinese Firms ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation axis of the project by examining the labor market effects of industrial robot adoption using IFR data. It extends the core task-based model literature by integrating monopsony power, offering micro-level evidence on how automation alters labor supply elasticity and wage markdowns, which complements the standard shift-share analysis of employment and wages. This paper examines the impact of automation technology diffusion on the monopsony power of Chinese firms. Drawing on the China Industrial Enterprise Database for the period 1998-2013 and supplementing it with industry-level robot data from the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), we reach three principal findings. First, the diffusion of automation technology significantly strengthens the monopsony power of Chinese industrial firms in labor markets. Second, mechanism analysis reveals that automation primarily operates through three channels: (i) substituting routine labor tasks and thereby weakening workers' outside employment options, which compresses labor supply elasticity; (ii)...	Xiyu Cai, Yifan Li, Zhuang Miao
9	2025	Artificial Intelligence, Greening of Occupational Structure and Total Factor Energy Efficiency ↗ This paper directly engages with the project's theoretical and empirical axes by applying an AI exposure instrument, closely analogous to the task-based shift-share design, to study labor market transformations. It utilizes a Bartik-style approach with an instrumental variable strategy rooted in foreign exposure (U.S. patterns) to identify causal effects, aligning with the methodological and automation-focused themes of the project. This paper investigates the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) exposure on regional total factor energy efficiency (TFEE), with a particular focus on its role in driving the greening of occupational structures. Using panel data from 274 Chinese cities during 2007-2021, we construct a comprehensive measure of AI exposure incorporating both industrial automation and AI-enabled services. Our baseline estimates indicate that higher AI exposure significantly improves total factor energy efficiency-specifically, a one standard deviation increase in AI exposure is associated with a 3.19% increase in energy efficiency. To address potential endogeneity, we employ instrumental variables based on...	Tian Li, Yao Hu, Fushun Zhang, et al.
9	2025	The Iceberg Index: Measuring Skills-centered Exposure in the AI Economy ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis of the project by developing a novel exposure index based on AI capabilities overlapping with human skills, fitting squarely within the task-based model framework. It serves as a key empirical application for the occupation-level shift-share design in the context of emerging AI technology, complementing existing literature on automation and labor market polarization. Artificial Intelligence is reshaping America's \$9.4 trillion labor market, with cascading effects that extend far beyond visible technology sectors. When AI transforms quality control tasks in automotive plants, consequences spread through logistics networks, supply chains, and local service economies. Yet traditional workforce metrics cannot capture these ripple effects: they measure employment outcomes after disruption occurs, not where AI capabilities overlap with human skills before adoption crystallizes. Project Iceberg addresses this gap using Large Population Models to simulate the human-AI labor market, representing 151 million workers as autonomous agents executing over 32,000...	Ayush Chopra, Bhattacharya, Santanu, DeAndrea Salvador, et al.
9	2021	Who Produces the Robots This paper directly addresses the task-based model and automation themes central to the project's theoretical axis, detailing how shifts in the skill requirements of capital good production affect labor market polarization. It provides the structural foundation for understanding robot adoption effects on wages and employment, which are key empirical applications of shift-share designs in the automation literature. To assess how disruptive automation and digitization could be, we develop a three-industry model involving routine and non-routine production of consumption goods or services, as well as capital good production. Workers exhibit different skill levels and only high-skilled workers can perform non-routine tasks in production. We compare an industrial economy in which the production of capital goods (machines) requires routine tasks with a future economy, the robotic economy, in which the production of capital goods (robots) requires non-routine tasks. We show that in an industrial economy, technological progress in capital production has an equalizing effect on wages and leads to integrated...	Hans Gersbach, Samuel Schmassmann
9	2023	Industrial Automation and Intra-Household Labor Supply ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) instrumental variable design to study the economic effects of industrial automation, a core empirical application of the project. It utilizes local robot exposure constructed via shift-share methods to identify causal impacts on intra-household labor supply, aligning perfectly with the project's focus on automation and methodological implementation. How does industrial automation reshape the division of labor within the family? While automation disproportionately displaces male-dominated routine tasks and raises women’s relative potential wages, I document a reallocation of household time that challenges standard insurance motives. Using American Time Use Survey (ATUS) data and a shift-share instrument for local robot exposure, I find that greater exposure induces women to withdraw from market work in favor of childcare and leisure, while men intensify their market effort. This divergence is driven by a behavioral reversal at the equal-earnings threshold and is amplified in commuting zones with traditional religious environments. To...	C. Michael Costanzo
9	2026	The AI Layoff Trap ↗ This paper directly engages with the project's theoretical axis by employing a task-based model to analyze the general equilibrium effects of AI-driven automation, a core empirical application of the shift-share literature. It addresses the critical distinction between partial-equilibrium worker displacement and aggregate demand externalities, providing a structural bridge relevant to the project's focus on general equilibrium adjustments. If AI displaces human workers faster than the economy can reabsorb them, it risks eroding the very consumer demand firms depend on. We show that knowing this is not enough for firms to stop it. In a competitive task-based model of a transitioning economy, each firm captures the full cost saving from automation but bears only a fraction of the demand loss it creates in the product market; the rest falls on rivals. This demand externality traps rational firms in an automation arms race, displacing workers well beyond what is collectively optimal. The resulting loss harms both workers and firm owners. More competition and ``better''AI amplify the excess; wage adjustments and free entry cannot...	Brett Hemenway Falk, Gerry Tsoukalas
9	2026	Agentic AI and Occupational Displacement: A Multi-Regional Task Exposure Analysis of Emerging Labor Market Disruption ↗ This paper directly extends the task-based framework and occupational shift-share exposure measures central to the project, applying them to emerging agentic AI technologies. It aligns with the theoretical axis by constructing an exposure index analogous to the Bartik instrument and addresses the project's focus on automation and occupational displacement dynamics. This paper extends the Acemoglu-Restrepo task exposure framework to address the labor market effects of agentic artificial intelligence systems: autonomous AI agents capable of completing entire occupational workflows rather than discrete tasks. Unlike prior automation technologies that substitute for individual subtasks, agentic AI systems execute end-to-end workflows involving multi-step reasoning, tool invocation, and autonomous decision-making, substantially expanding occupational displacement risk beyond what existing task-level analyses capture. We introduce the Agentic Task Exposure (ATE) score, a composite measure computed algorithmically from O*NET task data using calibrated...	Ravish Gupta, Saket Kumar Saket Kumar
9	2023	Immigration and the Slope of the Labor Demand Curve: The Role of Firm Heterogeneity in a Model of Regional Labor Markets ↗ [Title only] This paper directly addresses the immigration applications axis by modeling regional labor markets and firm heterogeneity, which are central to estimating the local labor demand elasticity relevant for shift-share designs. It provides theoretical grounding for how firm-level responses and regional market structures influence the identification of immigration shocks, aligning with the methodological concerns about exclusion restrictions and general equilibrium effects in the Card (2001) enclave instrument literature. No abstract available.	Andrea Ariu, Tobias Müller, Tuan Huy Nguyen
9	2017	Immigration, Occupations, and Local Labor Markets: Theory and Evidence from the U.S This paper directly addresses the immigration application axis of the project by analyzing how immigration shocks differentially affect local labor markets across tradable and nontradable sectors. It employs a shift-share style design to measure local exposure to immigration and investigates the underlying mechanisms of labor market adjustment, aligning closely with the methodological and empirical themes of the research project. In this paper, we show that labor-market adjustment to immigration differs across tradable and nontradable occupations. Theoretically, we derive a simple condition under which the arrival of foreign-born labor crowds native-born workers out of (or into) immigrant-intensive jobs, thus lowering (or raising) relative wages in these occupations, and explain why this process differs within tradable versus within nontradable activities. Using data for U.S. commuting zones over the period 1980 to 2012, we find that consistent with our theory a local influx of immigrants crowds out employment of native-born workers in more relative to less immigrant-intensive nontradable jobs, but has no such...	Lin Tian, Jonathan Vogel, Gordon Hanson, et al.
9	2014	Immigration and Careers of European Workers: Effects and the Role of Policies This paper directly addresses the immigration application of shift-share IV designs by utilizing a classic enclave-based instrument to identify the causal effects of immigration on native workers' career trajectories. It aligns perfectly with the project's empirical axis, extending the standard wage/employment analysis to occupation upgrading while rigorously addressing the core methodological requirement of purging local demand shocks. In this paper we analyze the response of career, employment and wage of native Europeans to immigration. We then ask how individual countrys policies affect these responses. We use data on 11 EU countries, over the period 1995-2001. We also use the 1991 distribution of immigrants by nationality across European labor markets to construct a version of the enclave-based instrument to proxy for the flow of immigrants, that is exogenous to local demand shocks. We find that native Europeans are more likely to upgrade to more skilled and better paid occupations, when a larger number of immigrants enter their labor market. We find no evidence of an increased likelihood of non-employment or...	Cristina Cattaneo, Carlo V. Fiorio, Giovanni Peri
9	2021	Trade Policy ↗ This chapter directly addresses the project by providing a comprehensive review of the shift-share method in the context of trade policy, including its interpretation and theoretical foundation. It also bridges the gap between local partial-equilibrium effects identified by shift-share instruments and aggregate general-equilibrium outcomes, which is a central concern of the research project. This chapter reviews a recent body of theoretical and empirical work that studies the normative and positive aspects of trade policy. We start by presenting reduced-form evidence of the effects of trade policy in the presence of supply-chain linkages, on the short-run and persistent effects of trade policy across local labor markets, and on the effects of trade policy uncertainty on employment and firms. We describe the shift-share method for trade policy analysis, discuss the interpretation of the estimated effects, and provide a theoretical foundation. We then describe new quantitative frameworks, methods, and data used to study the aggregate and distributional effects of trade policy in...	Lorenzo Caliendo, Fernando Parro
9	2025	AI and the Early-Career Penalty: Evidence from Korea ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share Bartik methodology to measure AI exposure using industry shares and AI diffusion shifts, aligning with the project's focus on automation and task-based technological change. It provides empirical evidence on labor market outcomes such as employment and wages for early-career workers, fitting within the automation and AI-capability indices axis of the research project. This paper examines how advances in artificial intelligence (AI) reshape labor markets using large-scale survey data from the Republic of Korea. I exploit the fact that the deep-learning breakthrough of 2012 was largely unanticipated and construct a shift-share instrument that combines 2012 industry employment shares with post-2012, industry-specific measures of AI diffusion. At the regional level, greater AI exposure between 2013 and 2022 leaves aggregate employment and wages essentially unchanged. Beneath this stability, however, the effects are highly heterogeneous. AI-based automation reallocates employment toward ICT occupations but generates sizable employment losses among new labor...	Joseph Han
9	2024	The Enduring Social and Economic Consequences of the China Trade Shock ↗ [Title only] This title directly references the 'China trade shock,' a core empirical application of shift-share instruments in the labor economics literature. The focus on enduring consequences suggests analysis of long-term local labor market outcomes, which is central to the project's interest in import exposure effects and worker-level trajectories. No abstract available.	David Autor
9	2024	The Enduring Social and Economic Consequences of the China Trade Shock ↗ [Title only] This paper likely analyzes the long-term impacts of the China import shock, a central application of the Bartik instrumental variable design in the trade literature. It addresses the empirical axis of local labor market effects, including health and political polarization, which are key outcomes studied in the 'China shock' stream of research. No abstract available.	David Autor
9	2025	Places versus People: The Ins and Outs of Labor Market Adjustment to Globalization ↗ This paper is a core contribution to the China shock literature, directly addressing local labor market adjustment using the standard shift-share framework to measure import exposure. It provides critical empirical evidence on the distinction between local partial-equilibrium effects and broader demographic adjustments, which is central to the project's theoretical and methodological concerns. This chapter analyzes the distinct adjustment paths of U.S. labor markets (places) and U.S. workers (people) to increased Chinese import competition during the 2000s. Using comprehensive register data for 2000-2019, we document that employment levels more than fully rebound in trade-exposed places after 2010, while employment-topopulation ratios remain depressed and manufacturing employment further atrophies. The adjustment of places to trade shocks is generational: affected areas recover primarily by adding workers to non-manufacturing who were below working age when the shock occurred. Entrants are disproportionately native-born Hispanics, foreignborn immigrants, women, and the...	David Autor, David Dorn, G. A. Hanson, et al.
9	2025	Data and Code for: "How Different Uses of AI Shape Labor Demand: Evidence from France" ↗ This paper directly applies the project's theoretical axis by analyzing labor demand responses to AI adoption using occupation-level task-exposure measures, a key extension of the shift-share logic to new technologies. It provides empirical evidence on how different AI uses shape labor markets, aligning with the discussion of AI-capability indices and the distinction between displacement and productivity effects. Using French firm-level data on AI adoption between 2017 and 2020, we establish four results. First, firms adopting AI are larger, more productive and skill-intensive. Second, difference-in-differences estimates reveal an increase in firm-level employment and sales after AI adoption, suggesting that the induced productivity gains allow firms to grow and outweigh potential displacement effects. Third, occupations classified in recent work as substitutable with AI also expand. Fourth, AI usage is a relevant dimension of heterogeneity in the labor demand response: we find positive employment growth for certain uses (e.g. ICT security) and negative for others (e.g. administrative processes).	Philippe Aghion, Simon Bunel, Xavier Jaravel, et al.
8	2010	Skills, Tasks and Technologies: Implications for Employment and Earnings ↗ This paper introduces the foundational task-based model that underpins the theoretical axis of the project, specifically explaining job polarization and skill-biased technological change. While it does not focus on the econometric mechanics of shift-share IVs, its framework provides the essential structural justification for the occupation-level exposure indices used in the automation literature. A central organizing framework of the voluminous recent literature studying changes in the returns to skills and the evolution of earnings inequality is what we refer to as the canonical model, which elegantly and powerfully operationalizes the supply and demand for skills by assuming two distinct skill groups that perform two different and imperfectly substitutable tasks or produce two imperfectly substitutable goods. Technology is assumed to take a factor-augmenting form, which, by complementing either high or low skill workers, can generate skill biased demand shifts. In this paper, we argue that despite its notable successes, the canonical model is largely silent on a number of central...	Daron Acemoğlu, David Autor
8	2009	Job Polarization in Europe ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis of the project by discussing job polarization and the routinization hypothesis (Autor, Levy, and Murnane 2003), which underpins occupation-level exposure indices in task-based models. It provides essential background on the mechanisms driving structural labor market changes, such as technology and globalization, that shift-share instruments aim to identify and analyze. The structure of employment is always changing, and economists are always trying to understand those changes. In the 1990s the idea of skill-biased technological change (SBTC) was used to understand the shift in employment toward more educated workers (see David H. Autor and Lawrence F. Katz 1999, for a survey). However, in recent years, it has become appar ent that a more nuanced approach is needed. The idea of SBTC might lead one to predict a uni form shift in employment away from low-skilled and toward high-skilled occupations, but studies for the United States (Autor, Katz, and Melissa S. Kearney 2006) and the United Kingdom (Goos and Manning 2007) have shown that there is growth in...	Maarten Goos, Alan Manning, Anna Salomons
8	2011	Rethinking the Effect of Immigration on Wages ↗ This paper is closely related to the immigration application axis, specifically addressing the estimation of immigration effects on native wages using structural production frameworks. It contributes to the methodological discussion by highlighting the importance of estimating substitution elasticities to combine own-group and cross-group effects, which complements shift-share instrumental variable approaches in understanding labor market adjustments. Abstract This paper calculates the effects of immigration on the wages of native US workers of various skill levels in two steps. In the first step we use labor demand functions to estimate the elasticity of substitution across different groups of workers. Second, we use the underlying production structure and the estimated elasticities to calculate the total wage effects of immigration in the long run. We emphasize that a production function framework is needed to combine own-group effects with cross-group effects in order to obtain the total wage effects for each native group. In order to obtain a parsimonious representation of elasticities that can be estimated with available data, we...	Gianmarco I.P. Ottaviano, Giovanni Peri
8	2016	The Surprisingly Swift Decline of US Manufacturing Employment ↗ This paper is closely related to the trade shock domain of the project, specifically addressing the China shock literature and the identification of local labor market effects. It employs an exogenous policy change to isolate industry-level shifts, providing relevant empirical evidence on how trade exposure drives manufacturing employment declines. This paper links the sharp drop in US manufacturing employment after 2000 to a change in US trade policy that eliminated potential tariff increases on Chinese imports. Industries more exposed to the change experience greater employment loss, increased imports from China, and higher entry by US importers and foreign-owned Chinese exporters. At the plant level, shifts toward less labor-intensive production and exposure to the policy via input-output linkages also contribute to the decline in employment. Results are robust to other potential explanations of employment loss, and there is no similar reaction in the European Union, where policy did not change. (JEL D72, E24, F13, F16, L24, L60...	Justin R. Pierce, Peter K. Schott
8	2018	Populism and the economics of globalization ↗ [Title only] This paper likely examines the political economy consequences of globalization, a core application area of shift-share instruments in the literature on trade shocks and political polarization. It probably discusses how local exposure to import competition, often measured via Bartik-style indices, drives populist sentiment, linking directly to the empirical applications axis of the project. No abstract available.	Dani Rodrik
8	2009	Task Specialization, Immigration, and Wages ↗ This paper closely relates to the project's focus on immigration shift-share instruments by offering a structural explanation for the modest wage effects found in such studies. It directly engages with the task-based model axis, demonstrating how differential task specialization between native and immigrant workers mitigates competition, a key mechanism in evaluating the exclusion restriction of immigration Bartik instruments. Large inflows of less educated immigrants may reduce wages paid to comparably-educated, native-born workers. However, if less educated foreign- and native-born workers specialize in different production tasks, because of different abilities, immigration will cause natives to reallocate their task supply, thereby reducing downward wage pressure. Using occupational task-intensity data from the O*NET dataset and individual US census data, we demonstrate that foreign-born workers specialize in occupations intensive in manual-physical labor skills while natives pursue jobs more intensive in communication-language tasks. This mechanism can explain why economic analyses find only modest wage...	Giovanni Peri, Chad Sparber
8	2018	The Trade Origins of Economic Nationalism: Import Competition and Voting Behavior in Western Europe ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) instrumental variable design, using historical industry shares as weights and US-China trade trends as the shift, to study the political economy effects of import competition. It aligns with the project's empirical focus on trade shocks and voting behavior while employing the specific ADH-style instrument construction central to the methodological discussion. Abstract We investigate the impact of globalization on electoral outcomes in 15 Western European countries over 1988–2007. We employ both official election results at the district level and individual‐level voting data, combined with party ideology scores from the Comparative Manifesto Project. We compute a region‐specific measure of exposure to Chinese imports, based on the historical industry specialization of each region. To identify the causal impact of the import shock, we instrument imports to Europe using Chinese imports to the United States. At the district level, a stronger import shock leads to (1) an increase in support for nationalist and isolationist parties, (2) an increase in...	Italo Colantone, Piero Stanig
8	2010	How Much Does Immigration Boost Innovation? ↗ This paper employs a classic shift-share (Bartik) instrumental variable design, explicitly using historical immigration distribution shares and national growth shifts to identify the causal effect of immigration on innovation. It directly aligns with the project's methodological focus on the Card (2001) enclave instrument approach and the immigration application domain, while extending the empirical scope to include innovation outcomes alongside traditional labor market variables. We measure the extent to which skilled immigrants increase innovation in the United States. The 2003 National Survey of College Graduates shows that immigrants patent at double the native rate, due to their disproportionately holding science and engineering degrees. Using a 1940–2000 state panel, we show that a 1 percentage point increase in immigrant college graduates' population share increases patents per capita by 9–18 percent. Our instrument for the change in the skilled immigrant share is based on the 1940 distribution across states of immigrants from various source regions and the subsequent national increase in skilled immigration from these regions. (JEL J24, J61, O31, O33)	Jennifer Hunt, Marjolaine Gauthier‐Loiselle
8	2010	How General Is Human Capital? A Task‐Based Approach ↗ This paper provides empirical validation for the task-based framework that underpins the occupational shift-share instruments discussed in the project. By quantifying the portability of skills and the role of task-specific human capital, it offers critical micro-foundations for understanding how technology shocks differentially affect occupations. This article studies how portable skills accumulated in the labor market are. Using rich data on tasks performed in occupations, we propose the concept of task‐specific human capital to measure empirically the transferability of skills across occupations. Our results on occupational mobility and wages show that labor market skills are more portable than previously considered. We find that individuals move to occupations with similar task requirements and that the distance of moves declines with experience. We also show that task‐specific human capital is an important source of individual wage growth, accounting for up to 52% of overall wage growth.	Christina Gathmann, Uta Schönberg
8	2019	Trade and Labor Market Dynamics: General Equilibrium Analysis of the China Trade Shock ↗ This paper is closely related as it provides a general equilibrium structural analysis of the China trade shock, directly addressing the project's unifying concern regarding the gap between local partial-equilibrium effects and aggregate general-equilibrium outcomes. It utilizes the same empirical context (US labor markets exposed to China trade) but employs a dynamic trade model with frictions rather than the standard shift-share instrumental variable design. We develop a dynamic trade model with spatially distinct labor markets facing varying exposure to international trade. The model captures the role of labor mobility frictions, goods mobility frictions, geographic factors, and input‐output linkages in determining equilibrium allocations. We show how to solve the equilibrium of the model and take the model to the data without assuming that the economy is at a steady state and without estimating productivities, migration frictions, or trade costs, which can be difficult to identify. We calibrate the model to 22 sectors, 38 countries, and 50 U.S. states. We study how the rise in China's trade for the period 2000 to 2007 impacted U.S. households...	Lorenzo Caliendo, Maximiliano Dvorkin, Fernando Parro
8	2018	What Can Machines Learn and What Does It Mean for Occupations and the Economy? ↗ This paper provides foundational measures for the theoretical axis of the project by constructing 'Suitability for Machine Learning' indices, a direct analogue to the task-based exposure metrics discussed in the research design. It directly informs the application of shift-share-style instruments in the automation literature by identifying which occupations are most vulnerable to new ML-driven technological shocks. Advances in machine learning (ML) are poised to transform numerous occupations and industries. This raises the question of which tasks will be most affected by ML. We apply the rubric evaluating task potential for ML in Brynjolfsson and Mitchell (2017) to build measures of “Suitability for Machine Learning” (SML) and apply it to 18,156 tasks in O*NET. We find that (i) ML affects different occupations than earlier automation waves; (ii) most occupations include at least some SML tasks; (iii) few occupations are fully automatable using ML; and (iv) realizing the potential of ML usually requires redesign of job task content.	Erik Brynjolfsson, Tom M. Mitchell, Daniel Rock
8	2024	GPTs are GPTs: Labor market impact potential of LLMs ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis concerning LLM task-exposure measures and their potential impact on labor markets, which is a key extension of the Bartik instrument methodology described in the project. It aligns with the focus on technology shocks and task-based models, providing empirical context for how large language models might function as modern automation shocks. Research is needed to estimate how jobs may be affected.	Tyna Eloundou, Sam Manning, Pamela Mishkin, et al.
8	2018	Do Recessions Accelerate Routine-Biased Technological Change? Evidence from Vacancy Postings ↗ This paper directly engages with the theoretical axis of routine-biased technological change and the occupational shift-share designs underlying the project's automation literature. It provides empirical evidence on how macroeconomic shocks interact with task-content exposure, offering key insights into the dynamics of routine-cognitive occupations relevant to the project's core framework. We show that skill requirements in job vacancy postings differentially increased in MSAs that were hit hard by the Great Recession, relative to less hard-hit areas. These increases persist through at least the end of 2015 and are correlated with increases in capital investments, both at the MSA and firm levels. We also find that effects are most pronounced in routine-cognitive occupations, which exhibit relative wage growth as well. We argue that this evidence is consistent with the restructuring of production toward routine-biased technologies and the more-skilled workers that complement them, and that the Great Recession accelerated this process. (JEL E24, E32, J24, J31, J63, L23, O33)	Brad J. Hershbein, Lisa Kahn
8	2021	The Adjustment of Labor Markets to Robots ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation/robots application axis of the project by employing a shift-share instrumental variable to estimate the local labor market effects of robot adoption. It provides empirical evidence on how robot exposure affects employment, wages, and occupational sorting, which are central themes in the Acemoglu & Restrepo literature and related task-based models. Abstract We use detailed administrative data to study the adjustment of local labor markets to industrial robots in Germany. Robot exposure, as predicted by a shift-share variable, is associated with displacement effects in manufacturing, but those are fully offset by new jobs in services. The incidence mostly falls on young workers just entering the labor force. Automation is related to more stable employment within firms for incumbents, and this is driven by workers taking over new tasks in their original plants. Several measures indicate that those new jobs are of higher quality than the previous ones. Young workers also adapt their educational choices, and substitute away from...	Wolfgang Dauth, Sebastian Findeisen, Jens Suedekum, et al.
8	2019	Is this time different? How digitalization influences job creation and destruction ↗ The paper directly addresses the task-based model framework central to the project by analyzing how digital technologies affect employment through specific task automation and creation. It provides empirical evidence on robot adoption and its differential impacts on skilled and unskilled labor, aligning closely with the automation and polarization literature discussed in the theoretical axis. Abstract With the process of digitalization now in full swing, many are wondering how the adoption of new technologies influences job creation and destruction. Much hinges upon the specific tasks that machines take on and how many new tasks are created through the adoption of new digital technologies. Some argue that most tasks that are at risk of automation are those performed by rather low- to medium-skilled employees, while most new tasks that emerge from the adoption of digital technologies complement high-skilled labor. We present evidence derived from representative survey data from Switzerland that is consistent with this view. Specifically, we find that increased investment in...	Benjamin Balsmeier, Martin Woerter
8	2021	Robots and Firms ↗ This paper directly investigates robot adoption, a central empirical application within the project's automation and shift-share literature. It provides crucial micro-level evidence on firm dynamics and productivity effects that contextualizes and extends the broader aggregate findings associated with Acemoglu and Restrepo. Abstract We study the microeconomic implications of robot adoption using a rich panel data set of Spanish manufacturing firms over a 27-year period (1990–2016). We provide causal evidence on two central questions: (1) Which firm characteristics prompt firms to adopt robots? (2) What is the impact of robots on adopting firms relative to non-adopting firms? To address these questions, we look at our data through the lens of recent attempts in the literature to formalise the implications of robot technology. As for the first question, we establish robust evidence for positive selection, i.e., ex ante better performing firms (measured through output and labour productivity) are more likely to...	Michael Koch, Ilya Manuylov, Marcel Smolka
8	2012	Do immigrants cause crime? ↗ This paper employs a shift-share instrumental variable design using foreign immigration flows to identify the causal effect of immigration, directly aligning with the methodological and empirical axes of the project. It applies the Bartik-style instrument to the immigration domain, a core application area, while also addressing key identification concerns regarding the exclusion restriction and specific outcome channels. We examine the empirical relationship between immigration and crime across Italian provinces during the period 1990–2003. Drawing on police administrative records, we first document that the size of the immigrant population is positively correlated with the incidence of property crimes and with the overall crime rate. Then, we use instrumental variables based on immigration toward destination countries other than Italy to identify the causal impact of exogenous changes in Italy’s immigrant population. According to these estimates, immigration increases only the incidence of robberies, while leaving unaffected all other types of crime. Since robberies represent a very minor fraction of all...	Buonanno, Paolo
8	2016	The Impact of Immigration: Why Do Studies Reach Such Different Results? ↗ This paper is closely related to the project's immigration axis, specifically addressing the methodological debates surrounding Card's shift-share designs and the interpretation of relative versus total effects of immigration. It provides critical background on identification assumptions, such as labor supply elasticity and skill downgrading, which are essential for understanding the limitations and diagnostics of shift-share instrumental variable strategies. We classify the empirical literature on the wage impact of immigration into three groups, where studies in the first two groups estimate different relative effects, and studies in the third group estimate the total effect of immigration on wages. We interpret the estimates obtained from the different approaches through the lens of the canonical model to demonstrate that they are not comparable. We then relax two key assumptions in this literature, allowing for inelastic and heterogeneous labor supply elasticities of natives and the "downgrading" of immigrants. “Downgrading” occurs when the position of immigrants in the labor market is systematically lower than the position of natives with...	Christian Dustmann, Uta Schönberg, Jan Stuhler
8	2000	Do Immigrant Inflows Lead to Native Outflows? ↗ This paper is a foundational study in the immigration shift-share literature, directly employing an instrument similar in spirit to the Bartik design to address local demand confounders in labor market analysis. It provides critical empirical evidence on the displacement effects of immigration, a core topic within the project's specified empirical applications axis. We use 1980 and 1990 Census data for 119 larger Metropolitan Statistical Areas to examine the effect of skill-group specific immigrant inflows on the location decisions of natives in the same skill group, and on the overall distribution of human capital. To control for unobserved skill-group specific demand factors, our models include lagged mobility flows of natives over the 1970-80 period. We also estimate instrumental variables models that use the fraction of Mexican immigrants in 1970 to predict skill-group specific relative immigrant inflows over the 1980s. Despite wide variation across cities in the size and relative skill composition of immigrant population changes we find no...	David Card, John DiNardo
8	2021	The Robot Revolution: Managerial and Employment Consequences for Firms ↗ This paper directly investigates the empirical consequences of robot adoption on firm-level outcomes, aligning with the project's automation axis and the Acemoglu & Restrepo framework. It provides crucial evidence on how technology shocks alter organizational structure and employment composition, offering a micro-foundation for the labor market effects central to shift-share designs. As a new general-purpose technology, robots have the potential to radically transform employment and organizations. In contrast to prior studies that predict dramatic employment declines, we find that investments in robotics are associated with increases in total firm employment but decreases in the total number of managers. Similarly, we find that robots are associated with an increase in the span of control for supervisors remaining within the organization. We also provide evidence that robot adoption is not motivated by the desire to reduce labor costs but is instead related to improving product and service quality. Our findings are consistent with the notion that robots reduce variance...	Jay Dixon, Bryan Hong, Lynn Wu
8	2020	Artificial Intelligence as Augmenting Automation: Implications for Employment ↗ This paper directly engages with the task-based model and automation literature, specifically addressing the distinction between AI as a complement versus a substitute for labor. It provides relevant theoretical context for understanding how different types of technological shocks, such as AI capabilities, influence employment outcomes in ways similar to robot adoption studies. There has been great concern in recent years that artificial intelligence (AI) may cause widespread unemployment, but proponents say that AI augments existing jobs. Both of these positions have sub...	Feichin Tschang, Esteve Almirall
8	2018	Is Automation Labor Share-Displacing? Productivity Growth, Employment, and the Labor Share ↗ This paper directly engages with the automation/robots axis by analyzing how automation affects employment and the labor share through various economic channels. It provides critical empirical context on the aggregate versus industry-level effects of technological change, which is essential for understanding the general-equilibrium limitations often discussed in shift-share literature. Many technological innovations replace workers with machines, but this capital-labor substitution need not reduce aggregate labor demand because it simultaneously induces four countervailing responses: own-industry output effects; cross-industry input-output effects; between-industry shifts; and final demand effects. We quantify these channels using four decades of harmonized cross-country and industry data, where we measure automation as industry-level movements in total factor productivity (TFP) that are common across countries. We find that automation displaces employment and reduces labor's share of value-added in the industries in which it originates (a direct effect). In the case of...	David Autor, David Autor, Anna Salomons, et al.
8	—	Globalization and Poverty This paper employs a shift-share identification strategy utilizing pre-liberalization industrial composition and industry-level liberalization intensity to estimate the causal effects of trade shocks on local welfare outcomes, mirroring the core methodology of the China shock literature. It provides valuable empirical context on the distributional consequences of globalization, aligning closely with the project's focus on trade shocks and local labor market effects. Although it is commonly believed that trade liberalization results in higher GDP, little is known about its effects on poverty and inequality.This paper uses the sharp trade liberalization in India in 1991, spurred to a large extent by external factors, to measure the causal impact of trade liberalization on poverty and inequality in districts in India.Variation in pre-liberalization industrial composition across districts in India and the variation in the degree of liberalization across industries allow for a difference-in-difference approach, establishing whether certain areas benefited more from, or bore a disproportionate share of the burden of liberalization.In rural districts where...	Petia Topalova
8	2018	Should we fear the robot revolution? (The correct answer is yes) ↗ This paper is closely related as it provides a foundational theoretical framework for understanding the distributional and macroeconomic effects of automation, a core empirical application of the project. It complements the task-based models and Bartik instrument literature by highlighting the structural assumptions regarding capital-labor substitutability and savings behavior that underlie such analyses. Advances in artificial intelligence and robotics may be leading to a new industrial revolution. This paper presents a model with the minimum necessary features to analyze the implications for inequality and output. Two assumptions are key: “robot” capital is distinct from traditional capital in its degree of substitutability with human labor; and only capitalists and skilled workers save. We analyze a range of variants that reflect widely different views of how automation may transform the labor market. Our main results are surprisingly robust: automation is good for growth and bad for equality; in the benchmark model real wages fall in the short run and eventually rise, but “eventually”...	Andrew Berg, Edward F. Buffie, Luis‐Felipe Zanna
8	2018	The impacts of digital transformation on the labour market: Substitution potentials of occupations in Germany ↗ This paper is closely related to the task-based theoretical framework underpinning automation and shift-share designs, specifically focusing on the substitution potential of occupations in Germany. It provides empirical evidence on how task-level exposure to technology, rather than broad occupational categories, predicts employment growth, which aligns with the project's interest in occupation-level exposure indices and robot adoption effects. Abstract The digital transformation will have large effects on the labour market. Previous studies mostly reveal that half of all current jobs are susceptible to automation in the next 10 to 20 years. These studies use assessments by technology experts on the future automation probabilities of occupations. We, instead, assume that only certain tasks in an occupation, rather than entire occupations, can be substituted. We directly calculate automation probabilities – labelled as substitution potentials – for occupations in Germany by using German occupational data from an expert database. Considering approximately 8000 tasks, we assess whether they can be replaced by computers or...	Katharina Dengler, Britta Matthes
8	2016	Robots and humans – complements or substitutes? ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation axis by analyzing the substitutability between robots and human labor, a core mechanism in the Acemoglu and Restrepo framework. It provides theoretical insights into the wage effects of AI and robotics that are fundamental to understanding the empirical outcomes studied in shift-share designs. The effect of the spread of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on wages depends on both the form of aggregate production relationships and the elasticity of substitution between human and robotic labor. With a conventional production function involving labor, robots, and ordinary capital, an increase in robotic labor can have either a positive or a negative effect on wages. Alternatively, it is possible to estimate the aggregate production relationship without measuring capital or other fixed factors explicitly, using the procedure developed by Houthakker in the 1950s. Houthakker's method is based on the probability distribution of the productivity of the variable factor. Fitting different...	Stephen J. DeCanio
8	2016	The Economic Impact of Syrian Refugees on Host Countries: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Turkey ↗ This paper is closely related to the immigration applications axis, specifically examining the labor market effects of immigrant inflows which are a primary context for shift-share instruments. However, it relies on a quasi-experimental natural experiment design rather than a constructed Bartik instrument, distinguishing it from the core methodological focus. The Syrian Conflict generated forced immigration from northern Syria to southeastern Turkey. Arrival of refugees resembles a natural experiment, which offers good opportunities to study the economic impact of immigration. I study three main outcomes: labor markets, consumer prices, and housing rents. I document moderate employment losses among native informal workers, which suggests that they are partly substituted by refugees. Prices of the items produced in informal labor intensive sectors declined due to labor cost advantages generated by refugee inflows. Finally, refugee inflows increased the rents of higher quality housing units, while there is no effect on lower quality units.	Semih Tümen
8	2016	Mr. Rossi, Mr. Hu and politics. The role of immigration in shaping natives' voting behavior ↗ This paper is closely related to the immigration axis of the project as it empirically investigates the political polarization effects of immigration inflows using an instrumental variable strategy. It directly addresses the application of shift-share-like designs to study how immigration impacts native voting behavior, a key outcome in the trade and automation shock literature. Using Italian municipality-level data on national elections and IV estimation strategy, we find that immigration generates a sizable causal increase in votes for the center-right coalition, which has a political platform less favorable to immigrants. Additional findings are: (i) the effect is heterogeneous across municipalities with different sizes; (ii) the gain in votes for the center-right coalition corresponds to a loss of votes for the center and center-left parties, a decrease in voter turnout, and a rise in protest votes; (iii) the relationship between immigration and electoral gains percolates to mayoral election at the municipality level; (iv) cultural diversity, competition in the...	Guglielmo Barone, Alessio D’Ignazio, Guido de Blasio, et al.
8	2016	Estimating Local Fiscal Multipliers ↗ This paper is closely related as it estimates local fiscal multipliers, a key empirical application listed in the project's scope. While it utilizes a census-based instrument rather than a traditional shift-share design, it contributes relevant context to the broader discussion of identifying exogenous government spending shocks and their regional economic impacts. We propose a new source of cross-sectional variation that may identify causal impacts of government spending on the economy. We use the fact that a large number of federal spending programs depend on local population levels. Every ten years, the Census provides a count of local populations. Since a different method is used to estimate non-Census year populations, this change in methodology leads to variation in the allocation of billions of dollars in federal spending. Our baseline results follow a treatment-effects framework where we estimate the effect of a Census Shock on federal spending, income, and employment growth by re-weighting the data based on an estimated propensity score that...	Juan Carlos Suárez Serrato, Philippe Wingender
8	2010	Upgrading or polarization? Occupational change in Britain, Germany, Spain and Switzerland, 1990-2008 ↗ This paper directly addresses the task-based model and occupational polarization, which are core theoretical components of the project's theoretical axis. It provides key empirical evidence on routinization and technological change effects on employment structure across multiple countries, offering relevant context for understanding the mechanisms behind occupation-level exposure indices. We analyse occupational change over the last two decades in Britain, Germany, Spain and Switzerland: which jobs have been expanding-high-paid jobs, lowpaid jobs or both? Based on individual-level data, four hypotheses are examined: skill-biased technical change, routinization, skill supply evolution and wagesetting institutions. We find massive occupational upgrading which matches educational expansion: employment expanded most at the top of the occupational hierarchy, among managers and professionals. In parallel, intermediary occupations (clerks and production workers) declined relative to those at the bottom (interpersonal service workers). This U-shaped pattern of upgrading is...	Daniel Oesch, J. Rodriguez Menes
8	2017	Winners and Losers in International Trade: The Effects on US Presidential Voting ↗ This paper is closely related as it extends the China shock literature by applying shift-share-like exposure measures to political outcomes, specifically voting behavior, which is a key empirical application domain for the project. It utilizes industry-level trade exposure to explain local labor market political polarization, directly engaging with the methodological and empirical themes of import competition effects. Abstract International trade directly influences US presidential elections. We explore the electoral implications of the increasing tradability of services and the large US surplus in services trade. Our paper builds on prior work showing that job insecurity from import competition in manufacturing diminishes political support for incumbents. We construct novel measures of the tradability of an industry using establishment-level data covering nearly all US economic activity. We find increases in incumbent party vote shares in counties with large numbers of workers in high-skilled tradable services as well as goods, and decreases in counties with high employment in low-skilled manufacturing...	J. Bradford Jensen, Dennis P. Quinn, Stephen Weymouth
8	2023	Trade networks and firm value: Evidence from the U.S.-China trade war ↗ This paper directly addresses the trade shock axis of the project by analyzing the financial impacts of the China shock on firm value and supply chains. It utilizes exposure measures based on import and export dependencies, aligning with the empirical context of local labor market and firm-level effects studied in the China shock literature. We study the financial implications of the 2018-2019 U.S.-China trade war for global supply chains. Around the dates when higher tariffs are announced, U.S. firms depending more on exports to and imports from China experience larger declines in stock returns. The negative impact spill over to the affected firms’ suppliers and customers through production networks. We also exploit the within-firm variation in exposure according to the detailed lists of tariffed products, and a reverse experiment based on the trade talks in 2019. We explain the findings with a theoretical model that highlights how the complex trade structure shapes shareholder wealth. JEL Classification: F10, G12, G14, O24	Yi Huang, Chen Lin, Sibo Liu, et al.
8	2015	The Age of the Dragon: The Effect of Imports from China on Firm‐Level Prices ↗ This paper directly addresses the trade shocks axis of the project by analyzing the local labor market and firm-level effects of the China shock using import exposure. It complements the core shift-share literature by focusing on price dynamics and firm heterogeneity, which are key mechanisms in understanding the broader economic impacts of such exogenous supply shocks. We analyze the impact of increased import penetration from China on the dynamics of firm‐level output prices in Italy. Accounting for potential endogeneity biases we find a significant and negative causal relationship: a 0.1 percentage point higher Chinese import penetration restrains price growth by 0.17 percentage points per year. This relationship reflects a procompetitive effect induced by cheaper imports, and, thanks to the firm‐level dimension of our data, we show that it is driven by low‐productivity firms within less skill‐intensive sectors. Finally, we show that Chinese import competition also had a dampening effect on Italian overall inflation.	Matteo Bugamelli, Silvia Fabiani, Enrico Sette
8	2020	Robots and reshoring: Evidence from Mexican labor markets ↗ This paper applies the shift-share (Bartik) methodology to estimate the causal impact of foreign robot adoption on employment in an offshoring country, directly engaging with the automation and trade shock themes of the project. It explicitly utilizes industry shares and foreign shift instruments, aligning closely with the methodological and empirical axes regarding robot exposure and international labor market dynamics. Robots in advanced economies have the potential to reduce employment in offshoring countries by fueling reshoring. Using robots instead of humans for production may reduce the relative cost of domestic production and, in turn, lower demand for imports from offshoring countries. I analyze the impact of robots on employment in an offshoring country, using data from Mexican local labor markets between 1990 and 2015. A recent literature shows that the effect of robots on local employment can be estimated by regressing the change in employment on exposure to domestic robots in local labor markets. I similarly construct a measure of exposure to foreign robots , assuming that the share of US...	Marius Faber
8	2020	The rise of robots and the fall of routine jobs ↗ This paper is closely related as it directly investigates the impact of robot adoption on employment using an industrial-level exposure measure, aligning with the automation/robots empirical application axis. It utilizes the task-based framework by distinguishing effects based on routine-intensity, which supports the theoretical and empirical foundations of the project's shift-share design for automation shocks. This paper examines the impact of industrial robots on jobs. We combine data on robot adoption and occupations by industry in thirty-seven countries for the period from 2005 to 2015. We exploit differences across industries in technical feasibility – defined as the industry's share of tasks replaceable by robots – to identify the impact of robot usage on employment. The data allow us to differentiate effects by the routine-intensity of employment. We find that a rise in robot adoption relates significantly to a fall in the employment share of routine manual task-intensive jobs. This relation is observed in high-income countries, but not in emerging market and transition economies.	Gaaitzen J. de Vries, Elisabetta Gentile, Sébastien Miroudot, et al.
8	2007	The effect of immigration on the labor market performance of native-born workers: some evidence for Spain ↗ This paper is closely related to the immigration application axis of the project, specifically addressing the effects of immigration on native workers' wages and employment. It provides international evidence on a key topic within the shift-share instrument literature, complementing the US-centric Card (2001) and enclave instrument studies. This paper provides an approximation to the labor market effects of immigrants in Spain, a country where labor market institutions and immigration policy exhibit some peculiarities, during the second half of the 1990s, the period in which immigration flows accelerated. By using alternative data sets, we estimate both the impact of legal and total immigration flows on the employment rates and wages of native workers, accounting for the possible occupational and geographical mobility of immigrants and native-born workers. Using different samples and estimation procedures, we have not found a significant negative effect of immigration on either the employment rates or wages of native workers...	Raquel Carrasco, Juan F. Jimeno, A. Carolina Ortega
8	2018	Unpacking the polarization of workplace skills ↗ This paper is closely related as it empirically investigates occupational polarization, a core phenomenon explained by the task-based models underlying the project's theoretical axis. It complements the shift-share literature by using network science to decompose skill requirements, providing a nuanced view of the mechanisms driving the routine vs. non-routine task shifts that motivate instruments like RTI or robot adoption indices. Economic inequality is one of the biggest challenges facing society today. Inequality has been recently exacerbated by growth in high- and low-wage occupations at the expense of middle-wage occupations, leading to a "hollowing" of the middle class. Yet, our understanding of how workplace skills drive this process is limited. Specifically, how do skill requirements distinguish high- and low-wage occupations, and does this distinction constrain the mobility of individuals and urban labor markets? Using unsupervised clustering techniques from network science, we show that skills exhibit a striking polarization into two clusters that highlight the specific social-cognitive skills and...	Ahmad Alabdulkareem, Morgan R. Frank, Lijun Sun, et al.
8	2021	Voting for Populism in Europe: Globalization, Technological Change, and the Extreme Right ↗ This paper is closely related as it empirically links trade shocks and automation to political polarization, a key empirical application of shift-share designs in the labor economics literature. It builds on the theoretical axis connecting economic exposure to political outcomes, although it focuses on aggregate European trends rather than constructing a specific instrumental variable. What are the political consequences of economic globalization? Since the 1990s, scholars of European party politics have noted the rise of extremist parties, especially right-wing populist ones, and the decline of mainstream left and right parties. This paper focuses on the association between globalization in terms of trade, capital and labor flows, technological change, and popular support for extreme right parties. I examine these relations at the regional and individual level in 15 advanced industrial democracies in Western Europe from 1990 to 2018. Globalization, especially in the form of trade, is associated with growing vote shares for extreme right parties. Technological change in...	Helen V. Milner
8	2006	Does immigration affect wages? A look at occupation-level evidence ↗ This paper directly addresses the immigration application axis of the project by estimating the wage effects of immigration on native workers using occupation-level data. It provides empirical evidence on how immigration impacts different skill groups, a core topic within the Bartik instrument literature discussed in the project description. Previous research has reached mixed conclusions about the effect of higher levels of immigration on the wages of natives. This paper reexamines this question using data from the Current Population Survey and the Immigration and Naturalization Service and focuses on differential effects by skill level. Using occupation as a proxy for skill, we find that an increase in the fraction of foreign-born workers tends to lower the wages of natives in blue collar occupations-particularly after controlling for endogeneity-but does not have a statistically significant negative effect among natives in skilled occupations. The results also indicate that immigrants adjusting their immigration status...	Pia M. Orrenius, Madeline Zavodny
8	2015	How Legislators Respond to Localized Economic Shocks: Evidence from Chinese Import Competition ↗ This paper directly applies the China shock shift-share instrument to analyze the political economy implications of trade exposure, a key empirical domain of the project. It builds on the foundational Autor-Dorn-Hanson framework to investigate how localized economic shocks influence legislative behavior, thereby connecting the methodological core to broader political outcomes. We explore the effects of localized economic shocks from trade on roll-call behavior and electoral outcomes in the US House, 1990–2010. We demonstrate that economic shocks from Chinese import competition—first studied by Autor, Dorn, and Hanson—cause legislators to vote in a more protectionist direction on trade bills but cause no change in their voting on all other bills. At the same time, these shocks have no effect on the reelection rates of incumbents, the probability an incumbent faces a primary challenge, or the partisan control of the district. Though changes in economic conditions are likely to cause electoral turnover in many cases, incumbents exposed to negative economic shocks...	James Feigenbaum, Andrew B. Hall
8	2020	Trade, pollution and mortality in China ↗ This paper utilizes a shift-share (Bartik) instrumental variable design based on local industrial composition and national export shocks to identify the causal effects of trade on environmental and health outcomes. It directly applies the core methodological framework of the project to the China trade shock literature, extending the empirical analysis to pollution and mortality. Did the rapid expansion of Chinese exports between 1990 and 2010 contribute to the country's worsening environmental quality? We exploit variation in local industrial composition to gauge the effect on pollution and health outcomes of export expansion due to the decline in tariffs faced by Chinese exporters. In theory, rising exports can increase pollution and mortality due to increased output, but they may also raise local incomes, which can in turn promote better health and environmental quality. The paper teases out these competing effects by constructing two export shocks at the prefecture level: (i) the pollution content of export expansion and (ii) the export expansion in dollars per...	Matilde Bombardini, Bingjing Li
8	2013	The Geography of Trade and Technology Shocks in the United States ↗ This paper directly addresses the core methodological concern of distinguishing between trade shock and technology shock exposures, which are central to the project's coverage of both trade and automation axes. It provides relevant empirical context by demonstrating how to separately identify the geographic impacts of these distinct shift-share instruments in US local labor markets. This paper explores the geographic overlap of trade and technology shocks across local labor markets in the United States. Regional exposure to technological change, as measured by specialization in routine task-intensive production and clerical occupations, is largely uncorrelated with regional exposure to trade competition from China. While the impacts of technology are dispersed throughout the United States, the impacts of trade tend to be more geographically concentrated, owing in part to the spatial agglomeration of labor-intensive manufacturing. Our findings highlight the feasibility of separately identifying the impacts of recent changes in trade and technology on US regional...	David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon Hanson
8	2015	Globalization and Its (Dis-)Content: Trade Shocks and Voting Behavior ↗ This paper applies the shift-share instrument framework to analyze the political consequences of trade shocks, directly aligning with the project's empirical focus on how import exposure drives local labor market outcomes. It extends the China shock literature by examining voting behavior, a key theme in the specified empirical applications. We identify the causal effect of trade-integration with China and Eastern Europe on voting in Germany from 1987 to 2009. Looking at the entire political spectrum, we find that only extreme-right parties respond significantly to trade integration. Their vote share increases with import competition and decreases with export access opportunities. We unpack mechanisms using reduced form evidence and a causal mediation analysis. Two-thirds of the total effect of trade integration on voting appears to be driven by observable labor market adjustments, primarily changes in manufacturing employment.	Christian Dippel, Robert Gold, Stephan Heblich
8	2018	Political machinery: did robots swing the 2016 US presidential election? ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation/robots application axis of the project by estimating the labor market effects of robot adoption using shift-share-like exposure measures. It extends the core empirical domain by linking these technology shocks to political polarization, a key outcome discussed in the China shock and automation literatures. Technological progress has created prosperity for mankind at large, yet it has always created winners and losers in the labour market. During the days of the British Industrial Revolution a sizeable share of the workforce was left worse off by almost any measure as it lost its jobs to technology. The result was a series of riots against machines. In similar fashion, robots have recently reduced employment and wages in US labour markets. Building on the intuition that voters who have lost out to technology are more likely to opt for radical political change, we examine if robots shaped the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election. Pitching technology against a host of alternative...	Carl Benedikt Frey, Thor Berger, Chinchih Chen
8	2024	The simple macroeconomics of AI ↗ This paper is closely related as it explicitly employs a task-based model to analyze the macroeconomic implications of AI, a core theoretical framework in the project's scope. It connects task exposure to aggregate productivity and wage inequality, bridging the gap between micro-level automation effects and general-equilibrium outcomes which is a key concern of the research project. SUMMARY This paper evaluates claims about the large macroeconomic implications of new advances in Artificial intelligence (AI). It starts from a task-based model of AI’s effects, working through automation and task complementarities. So long as AI’s microeconomic effects are driven by cost savings/productivity improvements at the task level, its macroeconomic consequences will be given by a version of Hulten’s theorem: Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and aggregate productivity gains can be estimated by what fraction of tasks are impacted and average task-level cost savings. Using existing estimates on exposure to AI and productivity improvements at the task level, these macroeconomic effects...	Daron Acemoğlu
8	2019	Climate policies and skill-biased employment dynamics: Evidence from EU countries ↗ This paper directly employs a shift-share instrumental variable estimator, engaging with the methodological axis of the project. It applies the skill-biased technology/change framework to climate policy shocks, offering relevant empirical context for how shift-share designs are used to identify distributional labor market effects. The political acceptability of climate policies is undermined by job-killing arguments, especially for the least-skilled workers. However, evidence for distributional impacts for different workers remains scant. We examine the associations between climate policies, proxied by energy prices and a stringency index, and workforce skills for 14 European countries and 15 industrial sectors over the period of 1995-2011. We find that, while the long-term decline in employment in most carbon-intensive sectors is unrelated to policy stringency, climate policies have been skill biased against manual workers and have favoured technicians and professionals. This skill bias is confirmed using a...	Giovanni Marin, Francesco Vona
8	2024	The Simple Macroeconomics of AI ↗ The paper directly addresses the theoretical axis of the project by employing a task-based model to analyze AI's macroeconomic effects, aligning with the underlying framework of Acemoglu & Autor. It complements the automation/robots literature by providing aggregate general-equilibrium estimates of productivity and inequality, which the project notes as a key distinction from local partial-equilibrium shift-share effects. SUMMARY This paper evaluates claims about the large macroeconomic implications of new advances in Artificial intelligence (AI). It starts from a task-based model of AI’s effects, working through automation and task complementarities. So long as AI’s microeconomic effects are driven by cost savings/productivity improvements at the task level, its macroeconomic consequences will be given by a version of Hulten’s theorem: Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and aggregate productivity gains can be estimated by what fraction of tasks are impacted and average task-level cost savings. Using existing estimates on exposure to AI and productivity improvements at the task level, these macroeconomic effects...	Daron Acemoğlu
8	2018	The Labor Market Effects of a Refugee Wave ↗ The paper directly addresses the immigration application of shift-share instruments, a core empirical domain of the project. It likely employs or critiques Bartik-style designs to estimate labor market outcomes, aligning closely with the methodological and thematic axes of the research. Giovanni Peri (gperi{at}ucdavis.edu) Professor of economics at the University of California, Davis, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, MA, and a Research Fellow at IZA Institute of Labor Economics in Bonn, Germany.	Giovanni Peri, Vasil Yasenov
8	2020	Explaining the Decline in the US Employment-to-Population Ratio: A Review of the Evidence ↗ This paper explicitly identifies increased import competition from China and the penetration of robots as the most important drivers of within-group employment declines, directly engaging with the core empirical applications of the China shock and automation literature. It synthesizes evidence on labor demand factors that are central to understanding the local labor market effects estimated by shift-share instrumental variable designs. This paper first documents trends in employment rates and then reviews what is known about the various factors that have been proposed to explain the decline in the overall employment-to-population ratio between 1999 and 2018. Population aging has had a large effect on the overall employment rate over this period, but within-age-group declines in employment among young- and prime-age adults also have played a central role. Among the factors with effects that we can quantify based on existing evidence, labor demand factors, in particular increased import competition from China and the penetration of robots into the labor market, are the most important drivers of observed within-group...	Katharine G. Abraham, Melissa S. Kearney
8	2006	The Impact of Immigration on the Structure of Male Wages: Theory and Evidence from Britain ↗ [Title only] This paper is highly relevant to the immigration axis of the project, addressing the core question of how immigration affects native wages, which is a primary application of shift-share instruments like Card's enclave instrument. It likely contributes to the theoretical and empirical understanding of labor market responses to immigration shocks, a key domain specified in the researcher's scope. No abstract available.	Marco Manacorda, Alan Manning, Jonathan Wadsworth
8	2023	Towards low-carbon development: The role of industrial robots in decarbonization in Chinese cities ↗ This paper closely relates to the project's empirical applications axis by employing a shift-share instrumental variable design to study the effects of industrial robot adoption, a core topic in the automation literature. However, it extends the scope beyond traditional labor market outcomes to investigate environmental impacts, specifically carbon emissions, which represents a relevant but distinct application of the Bartik methodology. Technological advancements have played a key role in improving energy efficiency and reducing emissions, and industrial robots are important carriers of intelligent manufacturing and industrial upgrading. Although various countries and regions are under pressure to reduce their carbon emissions, a consensus has not been reached on whether industrial robots can help. This study investigates how industrial robots affect carbon emissions by categorizing industry data from the International Federation of Robotics (IFR, 2010-2018) into city-level variables. The empirical finding revealed that cities' carbon emissions have been significantly reduced by the application of industrial robots. By...	Lingzheng Yu, Yao Wang, Xiahai Wei, et al.
8	2016	Booms, Busts, and Fertility ↗ This paper employs a shift-share (Bartik) design identical in structure to those analyzed in the project, using industry composition shares and national growth shifts to identify local labor demand shocks. It serves as a key empirical example of applying this methodology to estimate causal effects on demographic outcomes, directly illustrating the method's application and interpretation. In this paper, I present estimates of the effect of local labor demand shocks on birth rates. To identify exogenous variation in male and female labor demand, I create indices that exploit cross-sectional variation in industry composition, changes in gender-education composition within industries, and growth in national industry employment. Consistent with economic theory, I find that improvements in men’s labor market conditions are associated with increases in fertility while improvements in women’s labor market conditions have smaller negative effects. I separately find that increases in unemployment rates are associated with small decreases in birth rates at the state level.	Jessamyn Schaller
8	2018	Export expansion, skill acquisition and industry specialization: evidence from china ↗ This paper employs a Bartik-style shift-share instrument to identify the causal effects of export demand shocks on human capital accumulation, directly utilizing the methodological framework central to the project's trade shock axis. By constructing regional exposure measures based on initial industry composition and differential skill intensities, it provides empirical evidence that complements the literature on local labor market adjustments to international trade. This paper studies the impact of export expansion due to the decline in tariffs faced by exporters on human capital accumulation across China. Following a theoretically consistent approach, I construct regional measures of high- and low-skill export demand shocks using the variation in initial industry composition across regions and differential skill intensities across industries. Using a sub-national data over the period 1990 to 2005, the empirical analysis shows that high-skill export shocks raise both high school and college enrollments, while low-skill export shocks depress both. These relationships appear to be attributable to the association between skill premium and skill demand...	Bingjing Li
8	2019	Trade liberalization and local labor market adjustment in South Africa ↗ This paper applies the shift-share instrumental variable design to study the labor market impacts of trade liberalization in South Africa, directly aligning with the trade shocks and methodological axes of the project. It demonstrates the use of district-level exposure measures constructed from industry shares and national tariff changes, providing relevant empirical context for understanding how such instruments identify causal effects in developing economies. Despite a large literature analyzing trade liberalization in developing countries, little evidence exists around its effects in sub-Saharan African economies characterized by high levels of baseline unemployment and weak manufacturing sectors. Using a local labor market approach, we investigate the causal effects of tariff reforms implemented in South Africa between 1994 and 2004 on labor market outcomes at the individual level. More specifically, we construct a district-level measure of exposure to tariff reductions equal to a weighted average of industry tariffs using baseline industry shares as weights, and estimate the effect of this shock on local economies. We find that workers in...	Bilge Erten, Jessica Leight, Fiona Tregenna
8	2015	Job Polarization and Task‐Biased Technological Change: Evidence from Sweden, 1975–2005 ↗ This paper provides key empirical evidence on job polarization driven by task-biased technological change, directly aligning with the theoretical axis concerning occupation-level exposure to technology shocks. It complements the project's focus on the underlying mechanisms of automation and routine task displacement, offering international context to the broader literature on technological change and labor market outcomes. Abstract In this paper, we show that between 1975 and 2005, Sweden exhibited a pattern of job polarization with expansions of the highest‐ and lowest‐paid jobs compared to middle‐wage jobs. The most popular explanation for such a pattern is the hypothesis of task‐biased technological change, where technological progress reduces the demand for routine middle‐wage jobs but increases the demand for non‐routine jobs located at the tails of the job–wage distribution. However, our estimates do not support this explanation for the 1970s and 1980s. Stronger evidence for task‐biased technological change, albeit not conclusive, is found for the 1990s and 2000s. In particular, there is both a...	Adrian Adermon, Magnus Gustavsson
8	2017	Trade Shocks and the Provision of Local Public Goods ↗ This paper directly utilizes the China shock shift-share instrument to examine local labor market outcomes, aligning closely with the project's core empirical application on trade shocks. It extends the scope by investigating the fiscal consequences of these shocks on local public goods provision, which relates to the broader discussion of local demand conditions and policy implications. We analyze the impact of trade-induced income shocks on the size of local government and the provision of public services. Areas in the United States with declining labor demand and incomes due to increasing import competition from China experience relative declines in housing prices and business activity. Since local governments are disproportionately funded through property and sales taxation, declining property values and a decrease in economic activity translate into less revenue, which constrains the ability of local governments to provide public services. State and federal governments have limited ability to smooth local shocks, and the impact on the provision of public services is...	Leo Feler, Mine Zeynep Senses
8	2016	IV Quantile Regression for Group-Level Treatments, With an Application to the Distributional Effects of Trade ↗ This paper is closely related as it empirically investigates the distributional effects of the China shock, a central application of shift-share instruments in the trade literature. It directly addresses the methodology's key concern regarding heterogeneous impacts across wage distributions while utilizing similar identification strategies to isolate causal effects. We present a methodology for estimating the distributional effects of an endogenous treatment that varies at the group level when there are group-level unobservables, a quantile extension of Hausman and Taylor, 1981. Because of the presence of group-level unobservables, standard quantile regression techniques are inconsistent in our setting even if the treatment is independent of unobservables. In contrast, our estimation technique is consistent as well as computationally simple, consisting of group-by-group quantile regression followed by two-stage least squares. Using the Bahadur representation of quantile estimators, we derive weak conditions on the growth of the number of observations...	Denis Chetverikov, Bradley Larsen, Christopher Palmer
8	2007	In Search of the Transmission Mechanism of Fiscal Policy This paper is closely related as it investigates the macroeconomic effects of government spending shocks, which aligns with the fiscal policy application of shift-share instruments discussed in the project (e.g., Nakamura & Steinsson). It provides relevant methodological context on identifying spending shocks and analyzing industry-level responses, which informs the broader discussion on fiscal multipliers and the distinction between local and aggregate effects. Most economists would agree that a hike in the federal funds rate will cause some slowdown in growth and inflation, and that the bulk of the empirical evidence is consistent with this statement. But perfectly reasonable economists can and do disagree even on the basic effects of a shock to government spending on goods and services: neoclassical models predict that private consumption and the real wage will fall, while some neo-keyenesian models predict the opposite. This paper discusses alternative time series methodologies to identify government spending shocks and to estimate their effects. Applying these methodologies to data from the US and three other OECD countries provides little...	Roberto Perotti
8	2022	Artificial Intelligence and Employment: New Cross-Country Evidence ↗ This paper is closely related to the project as it applies the task-exposure framework using the Felten, Raj, and Seamans AI-capability index, which is explicitly listed in the theoretical axis of the researcher's project. It provides empirical cross-country evidence on how AI exposure affects employment and hours worked, directly addressing the project's interest in automation, task-based models, and the distinction between displacement and productivity effects. Recent years have seen impressive advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and this has stoked renewed concern about the impact of technological progress on the labor market, including on worker displacement. This paper looks at the possible links between AI and employment in a cross-country context. It adapts the AI occupational impact measure developed by Felten, Raj and Seamans—an indicator measuring the degree to which occupations rely on abilities in which AI has made the most progress—and extends it to 23 OECD countries. Overall, there appears to be no clear relationship between AI exposure and employment growth. However, in occupations where computer use is high, greater exposure to...	Alexandre Georgieff, Raphaela Hyee
8	2013	International competition and industrial evolution: Evidence from the impact of Chinese competition on Mexican maquiladoras ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) IV methodology to analyze the impact of Chinese import competition, a core empirical domain of the project's trade shock literature. It extends the standard 'China shock' analysis to a new context (Mexican maquiladoras) and examines firm-level responses, providing valuable evidence on industrial evolution and labor market adjustments driven by foreign supply shocks. Effects of the competition between two South locations (Mexico and China) in a Northern market (US) are analyzed. By employing a plant-level data set that covers the universe of Mexican export processing plants (maquiladoras) from 1990 to 2006 and relying on an instrumental variable strategy that exploits exogenous intensification of Chinese imports in the world in conjunction with the WTO accession of China, the empirical analysis reveals a substantial effect of intensified Chinese competition on maquiladoras. In particular, competition from China has a negative and significant impact on employment and plant growth, both through the intensive and the extensive margin. As the negative...	Hâle Utar, Luis Bernardo Torres Ruiz
8	2016	THE IMPACT OF CHINESE IMPORT COMPETITION ON THE LOCAL STRUCTURE OF EMPLOYMENT AND WAGES: EVIDENCE FROM FRANCE ↗ This paper applies the shift-share design to analyze the labor market effects of the China shock in France, directly addressing the empirical applications axis of the project. It provides relevant cross-country evidence on how import exposure affects local employment structures and wage inequality, including spillovers into non-manufacturing sectors. ABSTRACT The rapid rise of Chinese exports over the past two decades has raised concerns about manufacturing jobs and wage inequality in high‐income countries. spillovers beyond the manufacturing sector are an important issue given the large size of the nontraded sector in modern economies as well as the imperfect spatial mobility of households. In this paper, I estimate the impact of Chinese import competition onto the structure of employment and wages of local labor markets in France, with an emphasis on spillovers effects beyond manufacturing and the degree of local wage inequality. Local employment and total labor income in both manufacturing and nonmanufacturing are negatively affected...	Clément Malgouyres
8	2020	AI and Jobs: Evidence from Online Vacancies ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis by providing empirical evidence on how AI capabilities affect labor markets, specifically measuring establishment-level exposure to AI and its impact on hiring and wages. It contributes to the discussion on task-based models and technology shocks, serving as a relevant contemporary example of the shift-share methodology applied to new technologies like AI rather than traditional robots or trade. We study the impact of AI on labor markets using establishment-level data on vacancies with detailed occupation and skill information comprising the near-universe of online vacancies in the US from 2010 onwards. There is rapid growth in AI related vacancies over 2010-2018 that is greater in AI-exposed establishments. AI-exposed establishments are reducing hiring in non-AI positions. We find no discernible relationship between AI exposure and employment or wage growth at the occupation or industry level, however, implying that AI is currently substituting for humans in a subset of tasks but it is not yet having detectable aggregate labor market consequences.	Daron Acemoğlu, David Autor, Jonathon Hazell, et al.
8	2019	Occupations and Import Competition: Evidence from Denmark ↗ This paper is closely related as it analyzes the impact of import competition on labor outcomes through an occupation-level lens, aligning with the project's focus on the China shock literature and the theoretical task-based model. It provides valuable empirical evidence on how specific human capital and occupational fixed costs shape the distributional effects of trade shocks, a key theme in understanding local labor market responses. I argue that the winners and losers from trade are decided primarily by occupation. In addition to fixed adjustment costs, workers build up specific human capital over time that is destroyed when they must change occupations. I show that ignoring human capital biases estimates of adjustment costs upward by a factor of 3. Estimating an occupational choice model of the Danish labor market, I show that 57 percent of the dispersion in worker outcomes is accounted for by occupations, and only 16 percent by sectors. Finally, the model suggests that rising import competition from 1995–2005 reduced lifetime earnings for 5 percent of workers. (JEL F14, F16, J24, J31)	Sharon Traiberman
8	2018	Adjusting to Robots: Worker-Level Evidence ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation axis of the project by providing worker-level evidence on the labor market effects of robot adoption in Germany. It complements the shift-share literature by detailing specific adjustment mechanisms, such as internal labor market mobility, which are critical for understanding the partial-equilibrium impacts of technology shocks. We estimate the effect of industrial robots on employment, wages, and the composition of jobs in German labor markets between 1994 and 2014. We find that the adoption of industrial robots had no effect on total employment in local labor markets specializing in industries with high robot usage. Robot adoption led to job losses in manufacturing that were offset by gains in the business service sector. We analyze the impact on individual workers and find that robot adoption has not increased the risk of displacement for incumbent manufacturing workers. They stay with their original employer, and many workers adjust by switching occupations at their original workplace. The loss of manufacturing...	Wolfgang Dauth, Sebastian Findeisen, Jens Suedekum, et al.
8	2020	Robot Imports and Firm-Level Outcomes ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation/robots axis of the project by employing a shift-share-style empirical strategy to identify the causal effects of robot adoption on firm-level outcomes. It contributes to the methodological and empirical discussions regarding how exogenous exposure to automation impacts employment, productivity, and labor demand, aligning closely with the Acemoglu & Restrepo (2020) framework. We use French data over the 1994-2013 period to study how imports of industrial robots affect firm-level outcomes. Guided by a simple model, we develop a novel empirical strategy to identify the causal effects of robot adoption. Our results suggest that, while demand shocks generate a positive correlation between robot imports and employment at the firm level, exogenous exposure to automation leads to job losses. We also find that robot exposure increases labour productivity and some evidence that it may raise the relative demand for high-skill professions.	Alessandra Bonfiglioli, Rosario Crinò, Harald Fadinger, et al.
8	2019	How can robots affect wage inequality? ↗ This paper is closely related as it directly addresses the theoretical mechanisms linking automation to wage inequality, a core theme of the project's task-based model axis. It complements the empirical shift-share literature by providing a growth-theoretic foundation for the distributional consequences of robot adoption discussed in Acemoglu and Restrepo. We explain the simultaneous presence of i) increasing per capita output, ii) declining real wages of low-skilled workers, and iii) a rising wage premium of higher education within a model of economic growth in the age of automation. The theoretical implications are consistent with the data for the United States since the 1970s. Thus, automation contributes towards our understanding of the driving forces of rising inequality. The immediate policy conclusion is that investments in higher education can help to soften the negative effects of automation.	Clemens Lankisch, Klaus Prettner, Alexia Prskawetz
8	2019	The effect of artificial intelligence on China’s labor market ↗ This paper is closely related to the theoretical axis of the project, specifically regarding occupation-level exposure to technology shocks and the task-based model underlying automation literature. It applies an exposure index concept similar to shift-share designs to estimate AI's substitution effects on the Chinese labor market, aligning with the project's focus on robot adoption and new technologies like AI. Automation and artificial intelligence technology have played a pivotal role in today’s economic and social development. They represent a labor-substituted technological progress, featuring more and more jobs to be replaced by AI. Based on the adoption rate calculated in our paper and theoretical substitution probability estimated by existing studies, our research estimates the actual substitution probability by AI for various occupations in China. By using this actual substitution probability on occupation level, we also explore the substitution effects on labor force with different characteristics and find that AI has larger substitution impacts on labors of female, old age, low education...	Guangsu Zhou, Gaosi Chu, Lixing Li, et al.
8	2011	Occupational Tasks and Changes in the Wage Structure ↗ This paper is closely related as it establishes the theoretical foundation of task-based models linking technological change to wage polarization, a core mechanism underlying the occupation-level shift-share instruments discussed in the project. It provides key empirical context for the automation and offshoring channels that drive the 'shifts' components in Bartik-style designs. This paper argues that changes in the returns to occupational tasks have contributed to changes in the wage distribution over the last three decades. Using Current Population Survey (CPS) data, we first show that the 1990s polarization of wages is explained by changes in wage setting between and within occupations, which are well captured by tasks measures linked to technological change and offshorability. Using a decomposition based on Firpo, Fortin, and Lemieux (2009), we find that technological change and deunionization played a central role in the 1980s and 1990s, while offshorability became an important factor from the 1990s onwards.	Sérgio Firpo, Nicole M. Fortin, Thomas Lemieux
8	2021	From Immigrants to Americans: Race and Assimilation during the Great Migration ↗ This paper directly employs a shift-share (Bartik) instrument to predict immigration inflows, fitting squarely within the methodological and empirical axes of the project. It extends the immigration literature by examining the social assimilation effects of Black migration on European immigrants, offering a relevant case study on how migration shocks influence local labor market and social outcomes. Abstract How does the arrival of a new minority group affect the social acceptance and outcomes of existing minorities? We study this question in the context of the First Great Migration. Between 1915 and 1930, 1.5 million African Americans moved from the U.S. South to Northern urban centres, which were home to millions of European immigrants arrived in previous decades. We formalize and empirically test the hypothesis that the inflows of Black Americans changed perceptions of outgroup distance among native-born whites, reducing the barriers to the social integration of European immigrants. Predicting Black in-migration with a version of the shift-share instrument, we find that immigrants...	Vasiliki Fouka, Soumyajit Mazumder, Marco Tabellini
8	2023	Industrial robots and firm productivity ↗ This paper is closely related as it directly investigates the effects of industrial robots on firm productivity, a key topic within the automation axis of the project. It explicitly employs the Bartik instrumental variable design to address endogeneity, aligning with the methodological focus on shift-share instruments in the robotics literature. Industrial robotics has become a driving force in the development of high-quality manufacturing enterprises. This paper investigates the impact of industrial robotics on the total factor productivity of enterprises and its mechanism of action through the use of data from A-shares of Chinese companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges from 2007 to 2019. We found that the use of industrial robots significantly increases the total factor productivity of enterprises, findings that still hold when Bartik instrumental variables are constructed. The mechanism of action suggests that industrial robot application improves both the human capital structure and the innovation capability of...	Dingyun Duan, Shaojian Chen, Zongxian Feng, et al.
8	2017	A Short-Run View of What Computers Do: Evidence from a UK Tax Incentive ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical and empirical core of the project by providing evidence that ICT adoption complements nonroutine cognitive work, consistent with the task-based model framework. Its focus on short-run causal effects of technology on employment and inequality aligns closely with the automation and labor market dynamics discussed in the Acemoglu & Restrepo literature. We study the short-run causal effect of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) adoption on employment and wage distribution. We exploit a natural experiment generated by a tax allowance on ICT investments and find that the primary effect of ICT is to complement nonroutine, cognitive-intensive work. We also find that the ICT investments led to organizational changes that were associated with increased inequality within the firm and we discuss our findings in the context of theories of ICT adoption and wage inequality. We find that tasks-based models of technological change best fit the patterns that we observe. (JEL D22, J23, J24, J31, M15, O33)	Paul Gaggl, Greg Wright
8	2018	Computers and populism: artificial intelligence, jobs, and politics in the near term ↗ This paper closely relates to the project by linking automation-induced job losses, particularly in blue-collar roles, to political polarization, a key empirical application in the trade shock and automation literature. It explicitly discusses the mechanisms of task automation and industrial robotics, which are central to the shift-share instrument framework and the theoretical task-based models described in the project. I project the near-term future of work to ask whether job losses induced by artificial intelligence will increase the appeal of populist politics. The paper first explains how computers and machine learning automate workplace tasks. Automated tasks help to both create and eliminate jobs and I show why job elimination centres in blue-collar and clerical workâ€”impacts similar to those of manufactured imports and offshored services. I sketch the near-term evolution of three technologies aimed at blue-collar and clerical occupations: autonomous long-distance trucks, automated customer service responses, and industrial robotics. I estimate that in the next 5â€“7 years, the jobs lost to each of...	Frank Levy
8	2004	The Economic Effects of Immigration into the United Kingdom ↗ This paper directly addresses the immigration application axis of the project, focusing on the labor market effects of immigration inflows which are commonly estimated using Bartik-style instruments. It provides relevant empirical context and debate regarding the impact of immigration on native workers, a key domain for the researcher's scope. This article is concerned with the economic effects of immigration. The emphasis is on Britain, but extensive material is also provided on other countries. Since 1997 a new British immigration policy has displaced previous policy aims, which were focused on minimizing settlement. Large‐scale immigration is now seen as essential for Britain's economic well‐being, and measures have been introduced to increase inflows. The benefits claimed include fiscal advantages, increased prosperity, a ready supply of labor, and improvements to the age structure. Fears that large‐scale immigration might damage the interests of unskilled workers are discounted. This article examines these claims. It...	David Coleman, Robert Rowthorn
8	2021	Tasks, Automation, and the Rise in US Wage Inequality ↗ This paper establishes the foundational task-based framework linking automation to wage inequality, which underpins the theoretical and empirical logic of occupation-level shift-share designs in the project. It provides key evidence on how technology shocks differentially affect routine tasks, serving as a critical background reference for understanding the mechanisms behind robot adoption and polarization measures. We document that between 50% and 70% of changes in the US wage structure over the last four decades are accounted for by the relative wage declines of worker groups specialized in routine tasks in industries experiencing rapid automation. We develop a conceptual framework where tasks across a number of industries are allocated to different types of labor and capital. Automation technologies expand the set of tasks performed by capital, displacing certain worker groups from employment opportunities for which they have comparative advantage. This framework yields a simple equation linking wage changes of a demographic group to the task displacement it experiences. We report robust evidence in...	Daron Acemoğlu, Pascual Restrepo
8	2019	Are Robots Stealing Our Jobs? ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation and robot adoption theme central to the project, specifically examining the differential effects of industrial robots on various occupation skill levels. It aligns closely with the theoretical axis regarding task-based models and the empirical context of how automation impacts labor market polarization and employment trajectories. The media and popular business press often invoke narratives that reflect widespread anxiety that robots may be rendering humans obsolete in the workplace. However, upon closer examination, many argue that automation, including robotics and artificial intelligence, is spreading unevenly throughout the labor market, such that middle-skill occupations that do not require a college degree are more likely to be affected adversely because they are easier to automate than high-skill occupations. In this article, the author examines the effect of industrial robots on occupations in the United States in 2010 and 2015. Results from regression models indicate that an increase in industrial robots is...	Eric Dahlin
8	2012	The Surprisingly Swift Decline of U.S. Manufacturing Employment ↗ This paper is closely related as it investigates the causal impact of Chinese import competition on U.S. manufacturing employment, a core empirical application of shift-share designs in the trade shock literature. It provides key evidence regarding the mechanisms driving labor market adjustments to trade shocks, which is central to the project's focus on the 'China shock' and its associated methodological and empirical dimensions. This paper finds a link between the sharp drop in U.S. manufacturing employment beginning in 2001 and a change in U.S. trade policy that eliminated potential tariff increases on Chinese imports. Industries where the threat of tariff hikes declines the most experience more severe employment losses along with larger increases in the value of imports from China and the number of firms engaged in China-U.S. trade. These results are robust to other potential explanations of the employment loss, and we show that the U.S.	Justin R. Pierce, Peter K. Schott
8	2019	Changes in Between-Group Inequality: Computers, Occupations, and International Trade ↗ This paper is closely related to the theoretical axis of the project, as it employs a structural framework linking computerization and international trade to occupational demand and inequality, which underpins shift-share designs in automation and trade literature. It provides key empirical context by quantifying the separate and joint contributions of technology and trade shocks to wage polarization, a core theme in the task-based model applications discussed in the project. We provide a unifying framework to quantify the impact of several determinants of changes in US between-group inequality. We use an assignment framework with many labor groups, equipment types, and occupations in which changes in inequality are driven by changes in workforce composition, occupation demand, computerization, and labor productivity. We parameterize the model using direct measures of computer usage within labor group-occupation pairs and quantify the impact of each shock for various dimensions of between-group inequality between 1984 and 2003. We find, for example, that computerization and shifts in occupation demand jointly account for roughly 80 percent of the rise in the...	Ariel Burstein, Eduardo Morales, Jonathan Vogel
8	2022	Robots and Employment: Evidence from Japan, 1978–2017 ↗ This paper closely relates to the automation axis by empirically investigating the employment effects of robot adoption, a core theme alongside Acemoglu & Restrepo (2020). It utilizes a task-based theoretical framework and leverages heterogeneous robot price shocks to identify causal impacts, directly aligning with the methodological focus on technology shocks and local labor market responses. This paper studies the relationship between industrial robots and employment in Japan on the basis of a unique dataset that allows us to calculate the unit price of robots. Our model combines standard factor demand theory with a recent task-based approach to derive a simple estimation equation between robot prices and employment, and our identification strategy leverages heterogeneous applications of robots across industries and heterogeneous price changes across applications. We find that the decline in robot prices increased both the number of robots and employment by raising the productivity and production scale of robot-adopting industries.	Daisuke Adachi, Daiji Kawaguchi, Yukiko Saito
8	2014	Do Differences in the Exposure to Chinese Imports Lead to Differences in Local Labour Market Outcomes? An Analysis for Spanish Provinces ↗ This paper applies the shift-share (Bartik) instrumental variable design to analyze the labor market effects of the China shock at the local level in Spain, directly addressing the trade shock domain of the project. It provides empirical evidence on how local industry composition interacts with foreign supply shocks to influence employment outcomes, a core mechanism studied in the trade literature. D onoso V . , M art�n V. and M inondo A . Do differences in the exposure to Chinese imports lead to differences in local labour market outcomes? An analysis for Spanish provinces, Regional Studies . In the period 1999-2007 Spanish imports from China multiplied six times, making that Asian country the fourth largest supplier to the Spanish economy. This paper analyses whether this massive increase in imports impacted on the labour markets of Spanish provinces to differing degrees, due to differences in their initial productive specialization. The results show that Spanish provinces with a higher exposure to Chinese imports experienced larger drops in manufacturing employment as a share of...	Vicente Donoso Donoso, Víctor Martín Barroso, Asier Minondo
8	2004	Local, Open Economies Within the U.S.: How Do Industries Respond to Immigration? ↗ This paper is closely related as it addresses the immigration application of shift-share instruments using historical settlement patterns as the shift component, a key topic in the project's empirical applications axis. It also provides relevant background on the theoretical mechanisms of industry adaptation to labor supply shocks, which connects to the discussion of local versus general equilibrium effects. A series of studies has found that relative wages and employment rates in different local labor markets of the US are surprisingly unaffected by local factor supplies. This paper evaluates two explanations for this puzzling empirical fact: (1) Interregional trade mitigates the local impact of supply shocks. (2) Production technology rapidly adapts to the local mix of workers. I test these alternative explanations by estimating the effect of increases in relative supplies of particular skill groups on the relative growth rates of different industries and on the relative utilization of these skill groups within industries. Labor supply shocks are identified with a component of foreign...	Ethan Lewis
8	2018	Technology, offshoring and the rise of non-routine jobs ↗ This paper directly addresses the task-based model theoretical axis by analyzing the differential impact of technology and offshoring on routine versus non-routine jobs. It provides foundational empirical context for the occupation-level exposure indices and polarization measures central to the project's scope. This paper documents the growing share of non-routine jobs in the labor force of thirty-seven advanced and emerging countries over the period 1999–2007. To examine the role of offshoring and technological change in driving this labor market development, we develop a task-based model of production in global value chains and propose a decomposition of changes in occupational labor demand. In the setup of the model, technological change affects the total number of workers with a certain occupation throughout the production chain, while task relocation consists of a shift in occupational labor demand from one location to another. For the empirical implementation we combine harmonized...	Laurie S.M. Reijnders, Gaaitzen J. de Vries
8	2019	Globalization and mental distress ↗ This paper directly contributes to the trade shock literature by applying shift-share type exposure measures to analyze the mental health consequences of import competition. It extends the empirical applications axis by documenting specific labor market and demographic channels through which trade shocks affect well-being, complementing the project's focus on labor market outcomes. We study the effects of import competition on workers' mental distress, using unique longitudinal data on mental health for British residents, coupled with measures of import competition in more than 100 industries over 1995–2007. We find that import competition has a large negative impact on individual mental health. Compared to a worker employed in the industry at the 25th percentile of the import competition distribution, a worker employed in the industry at the 75th percentile would need a yearly monetary compensation of £270 to make up for her greater utility loss. We find import competition to have larger effects on the right tail of the mental distress distribution, thereby...	Italo Colantone, Rosario Crinò, Laura Ogliari
8	2019	Why is labour receiving a smaller share of global income?* ↗ The paper directly engages with the task-based model and automation literature central to the project, specifically analyzing how routinization and technological exposure drive the decline in the labor share of income. It complements the project's focus on robot adoption and occupation-level exposure indices by providing empirical evidence on the macroeconomic implications of these structural shifts in both advanced and emerging economies. Abstract The labour share of income has been on a downward trend in both advanced and emerging economies. Declining labour shares in emerging economies, though less pronounced, present an important puzzle as they contradict the predictions of classical trade theory. This paper presents a stylized mechanism to reconcile these findings, at the centre of which is routinization, that is, the automation of labour in occupations highly exposed to substitution by computer capital. We assemble a novel dataset and introduce a new measure of the exposure to routinization to analyse the drivers of falling labour shares. While technological progress and exposure to routinization explain over half the...	Mai Dao, Mitali Das, Zsóka Kóczán
8	2005	Immigration, Skill Mix, and the Choice of Technique ↗ This paper closely relates to the project's automation and immigration axes by empirically linking immigration-driven labor supply shocks to firm-level automation adoption decisions. It provides crucial context for the task-based model and the endogeneity concerns inherent in shift-share IV designs by showing how local factor proportions can influence technology choices. Using detailed plant-le vel data from the 1988 and 1993 Surveys of Manufacturing Technology, this paper examines the impact of skill mix in U.S. local labor markets on the use and adoption of automation technologies in manufacturing.The level of automation differs widely across U.S. metropolitan areas.In both 1988 and 1993, in markets with a higher relative availability of lessskilled labor, comparable plants -even plants in the same narrow (4-digit SIC) industries -used systematically less automation.Moreover, between 1988 and 1993 plants in areas experiencing faster less-skilled relative labor supply growth adopted automation technology more slowly, both overall and relative to...	Ethan Lewis
8	2014	Trends in Earnings Differentials across College Majors and the Changing Task Composition of Jobs ↗ This paper is closely related as it operationalizes the task-based model central to the project by linking college majors to routine versus non-routine task exposure. It provides empirical evidence on how technological and task composition changes drive earnings inequality, aligning with the theoretical and empirical themes of automation and labor market polarization discussed in the project. We show that, among college graduates, earnings differentials across field of study have increased substantially since the early 1990s. We study the degree to which this increase can be accounted for by changes in the labor market return to skills associated with a major. To do so, we define major-specific measures of the relative importance of abstract, routine, and manual tasks on the job, by linking majors to the occupations they typically lead to. Changes in the relationship between earnings and these measures can account for about two-thirds of the rise in inequality.	Joseph G. Altonji, Lisa Kahn, Jamin D. Speer
8	2003	Local, Open Economies Within the US: How Do Industries Respond to Immigration? ↗ This paper is closely related as it investigates the local labor market effects of immigration using a shift-share-like identification strategy based on historical settlement patterns. It directly engages with the theoretical and empirical themes of the project, specifically exploring how industries adapt to labor supply shocks, a key mechanism underlying the interpretation of shift-share instruments in immigration and technology contexts. A series of studies has found that relative wages and employment rates in different local labor markets of the US are surprisingly unaffected by local factor supplies. This paper evaluates two explanations for this puzzling empirical fact: (1) Interregional trade mitigates the local impact of supply shocks. (2) Production technology rapidly adapts to the local mix of workers. I test these alternative explanations by estimating the effect of increases in relative supplies of particular skill groups on the relative growth rates of different industries and on the relative utilization of these skill groups within industries. Labor supply shocks are identified with a component of foreign...	Ethan Lewis
8	2023	Do we want less automation? ↗ This paper addresses the theoretical and normative dimensions of the automation axis, which is central to the project's focus on the task-based model and robot/AI adoption. It directly engages with the implications of technology shocks on labor markets, complementing the empirical analysis of shift-share instruments used to estimate these effects. AI may provide a path to decrease inequality.	Ajay Agrawal, Joshua S. Gans, Avi Goldfarb
8	2020	Tax Policy and Local Labor Market Behavior ↗ This paper employs a shift-share design similar to the one studied in the project, interacting national policy shifts with local industry shares to identify local labor market effects. It aligns closely with the fiscal policy application axis and the methodological focus on partial-equilibrium identification using this specific instrument structure. Since 2002, the US government has encouraged business investment using accelerated depreciation policies that significantly reduce investment costs. We provide the first in-depth analysis of this stimulus on employment and earnings. Our local labor markets approach exploits cross-industry variation in policy generosity interacted with county-level industry location data. This strategy identifies the partial equilibrium effects of accelerated depreciation. Places that experience larger decreases in investment costs see an increase in employment and earnings. In contrast, the policy does not have positive effects on earnings-per-worker. Overall, our findings suggest federal corporate tax...	Daniel Garrett, Eric Ohrn, Juan Carlos Suárez Serrato
8	2013	Taking technology to task: The skill content of technological change in early twentieth century United States ↗ This paper is closely related to the project as it empirically validates the task-based model framework underlying the automation literature by demonstrating how technological shocks differentially affect occupations based on task content. It provides historical context for the 'hollowing out' phenomenon and skill-biased technical change, which are central theoretical components of the shift-share instrument design discussed in the project. This paper uses new data on the task content of occupations to present a new picture of the labor market effects of technological change in pre-WWII United States. I show that, similar to the recent computerization episode, the electrification of the manufacturing sector led to a "hollowing out" of the skill distribution whereby workers in the middle of the distribution lost out to those at the extremes. OLS estimates show that electrification increased the demand for clerical, numerical, planning and people skills relative to manual skills while simultaneously reducing relative demand for the dexterity-intensive jobs which comprised the middle of the skill distribution. Thus, early...	Rowena Gray
8	2002	Upstairs, Downstairs: Computers and Skills on Two Floors of a Large Bank ↗ This paper is closely related to the theoretical axis of the project, specifically the task-based model (Autor, Levy & Murnane 2003) which underpins automation literature and occupation-level exposure indices. It provides foundational case-study evidence on how computerization automates rules-based tasks and alters skill demands, offering critical context for understanding the mechanisms behind technology-driven labor market changes. Many empirical studies document a positive correlation between workplace computerization and the employment of skilled labor in production.Does this mean that computers necessarily substitute for the tasks performed by less educated workers and complement the tasks performed by more educated workers?We explore this question by positing that computerization leads to the automation of tasks that can be fully described in terms of procedural or 'rules-based' logic.This process typically leaves many tasks to be performed by humans.Management decisions play a key role -at least in the short run -in determining how these tasks are organized into jobs, with potentially significant implications for...	David Autor, Frank Levy, Richard J. Murnane
8	2022	Death by Robots? Automation and Working-Age Mortality in the United States ↗ This paper directly applies the automation/shift-share empirical framework to examine the health consequences of robot adoption, a key application area in the project's empirical axis. It utilizes exogenous variation in automation exposure to establish causal links with mortality, extending the standard labor market outcomes (employment/wages) into a broader socioeconomic impact analysis. The decline of manufacturing employment is frequently invoked as a key cause of worsening U.S. population health trends, including rising mortality due to "deaths of despair." Increasing automation-the use of industrial robots to perform tasks previously done by human workers-is one structural force driving the decline of manufacturing jobs and wages. In this study, we examine the impact of automation on age- and sex-specific mortality. Using exogenous variation in automation to support causal inference, we find that increases in automation over the period 1993-2007 led to substantive increases in all-cause mortality for both men and women aged 45-54. Disaggregating by cause, we find...	Rourke O’Brien, Elizabeth F. Bair, Atheendar Venkataramani
8	2020	Non-Random Exposure to Exogenous Shocks: Theory and Applications ↗ This paper directly addresses the methodological foundations of shift-share instruments by proposing new tools to correct bias arising from non-random exposure to exogenous shocks. It explicitly situates shift-share instruments within a broader theoretical framework, offering finite-sample inference solutions that complement the existing diagnostics and identifying assumption debates central to the researcher's project. We develop new tools for estimating the causal effects of treatments or instruments that combine multiple sources of variation according to a known formula. Examples include treatments capturing spillovers in social and transportation networks, simulated instruments for policy eligibility, and shift-share instruments. We show how exogenous shocks to some, but not all, determinants of such variables can be leveraged while avoiding omitted variables bias. Our solution involves specifying counterfactual shocks that may as well have been realized and adjusting for a summary measure of non-randomness in shock exposure: the average treatment (or instrument) across such counterfactuals. We further...	Kirill Borusyak, Peter Hull
8	2024	Illuminating the effects of the US-China tariff war on China’s economy ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share logic by constructing grid-level measures of tariff exposure to analyze the macroeconomic impact of the US-China trade war, aligning with the trade shock literature. It extends the core design by examining heterogeneous local effects and aggregate consequences, which is central to the project's focus on partial versus general equilibrium effects. This paper studies the impact of the US-China tariff war on China, using high-frequency night lights data and grid-level measures of tariff exposure. Exploiting within-grid variation over time and controlling extensively for grid-specific contemporaneous trends, we find that each one-percentage-point increase in exposure to the US tariffs was associated with a 0.59% reduction in night-time luminosity. This impact was highly skewed across locations: Grids with negligible direct exposure to the US tariffs accounted for 70% of China's population. But the tail 2.5% of China's population with the highest exposure saw an implied 2.52% (1.62%) decrease in income per capita (employment) relative to...	Davin Chor, Bingjing Li
8	2020	Economic Geography, Politics, and Policy ↗ This paper directly addresses the spatial heterogeneity of trade shocks, which is the foundational context for Bartik instrument applications in the China shock literature. It provides essential background on how geographic distribution of economic activity drives local labor market outcomes and political responses, aligning closely with the project's empirical and theoretical axes. Globalization has reduced the importance of distance between countries. Yet, within countries, geography matters now more than ever. Economic activities, including production and employment, occur unevenly across space within countries, and globalization consequently impacts various regions differently. Some areas benefit from international economic integration while others lose, and as a result, economic geography shapes citizens’ experience of globalization. Economic geography also influences governments’ responses to globalization and economic shocks. Economic geography consequently merits the attention of political scientists. By examining economic geography, researchers will find new...	Stephanie J. Rickard
8	2008	The Labor Market Impact of Immigration in Western Germany in the 1990's ↗ This paper directly addresses the immigration axis of the project by estimating the labor market effects of immigration, a core application of shift-share designs. Although it employs a general equilibrium approach rather than a standard Bartik instrumental variable, it provides relevant empirical context and theoretical insights into the substitutability between native and immigrant workers. We adopt a general equilibrium approach in order to measure the effects of recent immigration on the Western German labor market, looking at both wage and employment effects. Using the Regional File of the IAB Employment Subsample for the period 1987-2001, we find that the substantial immigration of the 1990's had no adverse effects on native wages and employment levels. It had instead adverse employment and wage effects on previous waves of immigrants. This stems from the fact that, after controlling for education and experience levels, native and migrant workers appear to be imperfect substitutes whereas new and old immigrants exhibit perfect substitutability. Our analysis suggests that...	Gianmarco I.P. Ottaviano, Francesco D’Amuri, Giovanni Peri
8	2012	The Impact of Immigration on the Educational Attainment of Natives ↗ This paper is closely related as it investigates immigration effects using a shift-share style identification strategy based on historical settlement patterns, which is a foundational component of the Bartik instrument literature. Although it focuses on educational outcomes rather than labor market wages, it addresses the core empirical application of immigration shocks and the methodological challenges of instrumenting immigrant inflows. Using a state panel based on census data from 1940-2010, I examine the impact of immigration on the high school completion of natives in the United States. Immigrant children could compete for schooling resources with native children, lowering the return to native education and discouraging native high school completion. Conversely, native children might be encouraged to complete high school in order to avoid competing with immigrant high-school dropouts in the labor market. I find evidence that both channels are operative and that the net effect is positive, particularly for native-born blacks, though not for native-born Hispanics. An increase of one percentage point in the share of...	Jennifer Hunt
8	2020	Local labour market competition and radical right voting: Evidence from France ↗ This paper directly engages with the immigration application of the shift-share design framework by estimating the local labor market effects of immigration on political outcomes. It addresses a key empirical domain of the project—political polarization driven by economic shocks—while employing fine-grained local data to isolate competitive effects akin to the exclusion restriction concerns central to Bartik instruments. Abstract How do the economic effects of immigration affect radical right support? The evidence in support of the labour market competition theory — which posits that the economic threat posed by immigration to jobs and wages leads to radical right voting — has been mixed. On the one hand, individual‐level surveys underreport economic drivers because of social desirability bias. On the other hand, contextual studies show contradictory findings due to an over‐reliance on units of analysis that are too aggregated to meaningfully capture the competitive threat posed by immigrants. This paper identifies the influence of labour market competition on radical right voting at a local level in...	Diane Bolet
8	2019	The Employment Consequences of Robots: Firm-Level Evidence ↗ This paper is closely related to the project's empirical applications axis, specifically the literature on automation and robot adoption effects on employment. It provides firm-level evidence on how robot investments impact organizational structure and skill composition, directly addressing the mechanisms underlying the task-based model central to the researcher's theoretical axis. As a new general-purpose technology, robots have the potential to radically transform employment and organizations. In contrast to prior studies that predict dramatic employment declines, we find that investments in robotics are associated with increases in total firm employment, but decreases in the total number of managers. Similarly, we find that robots are associated with an increase in the span of control for supervisors remaining within the organization. We also provide evidence that robot adoption is not motivated by the desire to reduce labor costs, but is instead related to improving product and service quality. Our findings are consistent with the notion that robots reduce...	Jay Dixon, Bryan Hong, Lynn Wu
8	2019	Adjusting to Globalization in Germany ↗ This paper directly addresses the trade shocks application axis by analyzing labor market responses to import and export exposure, a core theme of the China shock literature. It provides valuable empirical context on worker-level earnings trajectories and scarring effects, which are key components of the project's focus on local partial-equilibrium effects. We study the impact of trade exposure on the job biographies of 2.4 million manufacturing workers in Germany. Rising export opportunities lead to two equally important sources of earnings gains: on the job and employer switches within the same industry. Highly skilled workers benefit the most. Import shocks mostly hurt low-skilled workers, especially when they possess lots of industry-specific human capital. They also destroy workers’ rents when separating from high-wage plants, and they leave strongly scarring effects in the event of a mass layoff. We connect our results to the growing theoretical literature on the labor market effects of trade.	Wolfgang Dauth, Sebastian Findeisen, Jens Suedekum
8	2020	Unpacking Skill Bias: Automation and New Tasks ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis of the project by extending the task-based model that underpins occupation-level shift-share designs and automation literature. It provides key mechanistic insights into how automation and new tasks affect the skill premium, which is central to interpreting the distributional effects identified by shift-share instruments in the automation domain. We extend the canonical model of skill-biased technical change by modeling the allocation of tasks to factors and allowing for automation and the creation of new tasks. In our model, factor prices depend on the set of tasks they perform. Automation can reduce real wages and generate sizable changes in inequality associated with small productivity gains. New tasks can increase or reduce inequality depending on whether they are performed by skilled or unskilled workers. Industry-level data suggest that automation significantly contributed to the rising skill premium, while new tasks reduced inequality in the past but have contributed to inequality recently.	Daron Acemoğlu, Pascual Restrepo
8	2023	Does artificial intelligence technology enhance green transformation of enterprises: based on green innovation perspective ↗ This paper directly applies the Bartik instrumental variable design to the automation domain by constructing a micro-enterprise robot penetration instrument, aligning with the project's focus on robot adoption and its methodological underpinnings. It investigates the labor-technology interface through the lens of green innovation, contributing to the broader empirical context of how technology shocks affect firm-level outcomes beyond traditional employment and wage metrics. In the context of the rapid development of artificial intelligence, industrial robots, as an important manifestation of artificial intelligence technology application, provide enterprises with a “creative destruction” environment, and play a positive role in energy utilization and environmental governance. Therefore, academics have focused a lot of attention on the question of whether industrial robot application can successfully improve corporate green innovation (CGI), thus achieving green transformation, and upgrading the manufacturing industry. This paper builds a “Bartik instrument variable” to calculate the micro-enterprise robot penetration rate from 2007 to 2019, looks at the effect...	Liang Peng, Xinhui Sun, Luzhuang Qi
8	2011	Explaining Job Polarizationin Europe: The Roles of Technology,Globalization and Institutions This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis of the project by empirically testing the routinization hypothesis, a core mechanism underlying occupation-level shift-share designs for automation. It provides cross-country evidence on how technology shocks drive job polarization, which is essential context for understanding the labor market mechanisms studied in the Acemoglu & Restrepo and Autor & Dorn literature. This paper shows the employment structure of 16 European countries has been polarizing in recent years with the employment shares of managers, professionals and low-paid personal services workers increasing at the expense of the employment shares of middling manufacturing and routine office workers. To explain this job polarization, the paper develops and estimates a simple model to capture the effects of technology, globalization, institutions and product demand effects on the demand for different occupations. The results suggest that the routinization hypothesis of Autor, Levy and Murnane (2003) is the single most important factor behind the observed shifts in employment structure. We...	Maarten Goos, Alan Manning, Anna Salomons
8	2023	Globalization, Trade Imbalances, and Labor Market Adjustment ↗ This paper provides crucial structural general-equilibrium context for the China shock literature, directly addressing the project's concern with distinguishing local partial-equilibrium effects from aggregate outcomes. By modeling trade imbalances and labor market frictions, it offers a complementary framework to the shift-share IV design for assessing the broader economic impacts of globalization shocks. Abstract We argue that modeling trade imbalances is crucial for understanding transitional dynamics in response to globalization shocks. We build and estimate a general equilibrium, multicountry, multisector model of trade with two key ingredients: (i) endogenous trade imbalances arising from households’ consumption and saving decisions; (ii) labor market frictions across and within sectors. We use our model to perform several empirical exercises. We find that the “China shock” accounted for 28% of the decline in U.S. manufacturing between 2000 and 2014—1.65 times the magnitude predicted from a model imposing balanced trade. A concurrent rise in U.S. service employment led to a negligible...	Rafael Dix-Carneiro, João Paulo Pessoa, Ricardo Reyes-Heroles, et al.
8	2024	The green innovation effect of industrial robot applications: Evidence from Chinese manufacturing companies ↗ The paper directly employs the Bartik shift-share instrumental variable methodology to instrument for industrial robot adoption, a core topic in the automation literature. It contributes to the project's empirical applications axis by estimating the causal effects of robot exposure on corporate outcomes, specifically green innovation, within the Chinese manufacturing context. Artificial intelligence has emerged to revolutionize society in China. Investigating whether industrial robot applications (IRAs) can contribute to Chinese economic prosperity has significant theoretical and practical significance. For this purpose, this study estimates the impact of IRAs on green innovation by decomposing the industry robot stock to the corporate level using global industry robot data and manufacturing data from Chinese manufacturing listed companies by constructing a Bartik instrumental variable. The results show that IRAs notably promote corporate green innovation. However, IRAs do not contribute equally to all corporations in green creation. Its effects on green...	Xiaoqian Liu, Javier Cifuentes‐Faura, Xiaodong Yang, et al.
8	2014	Import Competition and the Great U.S. Employment Sag of the 2000s ↗ This paper directly addresses the trade shock axis of the project by quantifying the local labor market and aggregate effects of the China import competition shock. It provides crucial empirical context for the core shift-share design while explicitly engaging with the methodological concern regarding the distinction between partial-equilibrium and general-equilibrium effects. Even before the Great Recession, U.S. employment growth was unimpressive. Between 2000 and 2007, the economy gave back the considerable gains in employment rates it had achieved during the 1990s, with major contractions in manufacturing employment being a prime contributor to the slump. The U.S. employment "sag" of the 2000s is widely recognized but poorly understood. In this paper, we explore the contribution of the swift rise of import competition from China to sluggish U.S. employment growth. We find that the increase in U.S. imports from China, which accelerated after 2000, was a major force behind recent reductions in U.S. manufacturing employment and that, through input-output...	Daron Acemoğlu, David Autor, David Dorn, et al.
8	2020	Immigration, Innovation, and Growth ↗ This paper closely aligns with the immigration application of the shift-share design, specifically utilizing the classic Card-style Bartik instrument by interacting historical shares with recent migration shocks. It extends the empirical scope of the project by linking these instruments to innovation and growth outcomes, thereby contributing relevant context to the methodological axis and empirical applications axis. We show a causal impact of immigration on innovation and growth in US counties. To identify the causal impact of immigration, we use 130 years of detailed data on migrations from foreign countries to US counties to isolate quasi-random variation in the ancestry composition of US counties; interacting this plausibly exogenous variation in ancestry composition with the recent inflows of migrants from different origins, we predict the total number of migrants flowing into each US county in recent decades. We show immigration has a positive causal impact on innovation, measured as patenting of local firms, and on economic growth, measured as real income growth for native workers. We interpret...	Konrad Burchardi, Thomas Chaney, Tarek A. Hassan, et al.
8	2023	Labor Market Exposure to AI: Cross-country Differences and Distributional Implications ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis by extending occupation-level exposure indices to account for AI's role as a complement or substitute, a key mechanism in the task-based model. It provides relevant empirical context regarding distributional implications and cross-country differences in labor market exposure to automation technologies. This paper examines the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on labor markets in both Advanced Economies (AEs) and Emerging Markets (EMs). We propose an extension to a standard measure of AI exposure, accounting for AI's potential as either a complement or a substitute for labor, where complementarity reflects lower risks of job displacement. We analyze worker-level microdata from 2 AEs (US and UK) and 4 EMs (Brazil, Colombia, India, and South Africa), revealing substantial variations in unadjusted AI exposure across countries. AEs face higher exposure than EMs due to a higher employment share in professional and managerial occupations. However, when accounting for potential...	Carlo Pizzinelli
8	2015	Measuring the impact of the Chinese competition on the Mexican Labor Market: 1990–2013 ↗ This paper closely relates to the 'China shock' literature by empirically estimating the labor market effects of import competition, a core empirical application of the shift-share design. It utilizes industry-level trade data to assess direct and indirect impacts on employment and wages, aligning with the project's focus on trade shock mechanisms and local labor market dynamics. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects that the Chinese competition has had on the Mexican labor market considering that both countries offer abundant low-skill workers and that China is one of the largest export countries, which directly competes with Mexico in the manufacturing industry. Particularly, panel data is used to estimate a dynamic labor demand and a dynamic wage equation to measure direct and indirect effects of the Chinese competition over these two variables. A negative direct impact was found, due to the Chinese imports into Mexico, affecting employment, and on a smaller scale affecting wages. Evidence was not found recording an indirect impact (via the US...	Cinthya G. Caamal-Olvera, Erick Rangel González
8	2024	Are they coming for us? Industrial robots and the mental health of workers ↗ This paper is closely related as it empirically investigates the labor market effects of industrial robot adoption, a core empirical application of shift-share designs in the automation literature. It contributes to the project's task-based model axis by highlighting how technology shocks differentially impact workers based on their routine task exposure and proximity to retirement. How does the increasing use of robots affect the mental health of workers? To investigate this question, we combine individual mental health data from the German Socioeconomic Panel with data on the stock of robots in 14 manufacturing sectors provided by the International Federation of Robotics for the period 2002–2018. Using mediation analysis and an instrumental variable approach, we find that higher robot intensity is associated with deteriorating mental health, an effect that is mainly driven by worries about job security and a lower sense of achievement on the job. A heterogeneity analysis reveals that higher robot intensity has particularly severe negative effects on the mental health...	Ana Lucia Abeliansky, Matthias Beulmann, Klaus Prettner
8	2016	International Trade and Job Polarization: Evidence at the Worker-Level ↗ This paper directly addresses the trade shock applications of shift-share designs by examining how import competition drives job polarization at the worker level, aligning with the project's focus on the China shock literature and task-based models. It provides specific evidence on how international trade affects different skill groups, complementing the broader discussion on local labor market impacts and the distinction between trade and automation effects. This paper examines the role of international trade for job polarization-the decline in opportunities for mid-wage workers while those for high-and low-wage workers increase. With employer-employee matched data on virtually all workers and firms in Denmark between 1999 and 2009, we show that import competition has caused worker-level adjustments that lead to job polarization. When mid-wage workers adjust to the shock, highly educated and skilled workers end up in high-wage jobs whereas less educated workers end up in low-wage positions. We show that the specific tasks performed by a worker are central in determining trade's impact, and workers performing manual tasks are the ones most...	Wolfgang Keller, Hâle Utar
8	2017	Instrumental Variables and Causal Mechanisms: Unpacking The Effect of Trade on Workers and Voters ↗ This paper directly engages with the core shift-share IV applications in the China shock literature, specifically addressing the causal chain between trade-induced labor market shocks and political outcomes. It advances the methodological axis by proposing new identification frameworks to unpack complex treatment effects within the standard Bartik design. Instrumental variables (IV) are a common means to identify treatment effects. But standard IV methods do not allow us to unpack the complex treatment effects that arise when a treatment and its outcome together cause a second outcome of interest. For example, IV methods have been used to show that import exposure to low-wage countries has adversely affected Western labor markets. Similarly, they have been used to show that import exposure has increased voter polarization. However, standard IV cannot estimate to what extent the latter is a consequence of the former. This paper proposes a new identification framework that allows us to do so, appealing to one additional identifying assumption...	Christian Dippel, Robert Gold, Stephan Heblich, et al.
8	2015	What Happens to the Careers of European Workers When Immigrants “Take Their Jobs”? ↗ This paper is closely related as it directly addresses the immigration application of shift-share IV designs by examining the labor market effects of immigration inflows on native workers' careers. It utilizes a methodology analogous to the enclave instrument to address endogeneity, making it highly relevant to the empirical applications and methodological discussions of the project. Following a representative longitudinal sample of native European residents over the period 1995–2001, we identify the effect of the inflows of immigrants on natives’ career, employment, and wages. We control for individual, country- year, occupation group- year, and occupation group- country heterogeneity and shocks, and construct an imputed inflow of the foreign-born population that is exogenous to local demand shocks. We find that native European workers are more likely to move to occupations associated with higher skills and status when a larger number of immigrants enters their labor market. We find no evidence of an increase in their probability of becoming unemployed.	Cristina Cattaneo, Carlo V. Fiorio, Giovanni Peri
8	2020	International trade, geographic heterogeneity and interregional inequality ↗ This paper is closely related as it employs a Bartik-style instrumental variable to estimate the local partial-equilibrium effects of international trade on regional economic outcomes. It aligns with the project's focus on shift-share designs and their application to understanding how trade shocks influence geographic heterogeneity and inequality. Abstract We study the effect of international trade on interregional income inequality from 1992 to 2012 in the majority of countries worldwide using satellite night-light-based inequality proxies. For our analysis, we develop novel indicators for within-country heterogeneity in trade costs that are based on exogenous geographical features. In order to deal with potential endogeneity issues, we apply a gravity-style instrument that utilizes the occurrence of large natural disasters striking trade partners, as well as a Bartik-style instrument. In contrast to previous studies, our IV estimates reveal that international trade aggravates economic disparities only in those countries that have a...	Georg Hirte, Christian Leßmann, André Seidel
8	2011	Trade Induced Technical Change? The Impact of Chinese Imports on Innovation, it and Productivity This paper is closely related as it empirically investigates a key dimension of the China shock literature, specifically the impact of import competition on firm-level innovation and productivity. It employs a shift-share style instrument (quota removal) to identify causal effects, aligning with the project's focus on trade shocks and their microeconomic consequences. We examine the impact of Chinese import competition on patenting, IT, R&D and TFP using a panel of up to half a million firms over 1996-2007 across twelve European countries. We correct for endogeneity using the removal of product-specific quotas following China’s entry into the World Trade Organization. Chinese import competition had two effects: first, it led to increases in R&D, patenting, IT and TFP within firms; and second it reallocated employment between firms towards more innovative and technologically advanced firms. These within and between effects were about equal in magnitude, and appear to account for around 15% of European technology upgrading between 2000-2007. Rising Chinese...	Nicholas Bloom, Mirko Draca, John Van Reenen
8	2023	Lessons from US–China Trade Relations ↗ This review directly addresses the China shock literature, a core empirical application of the shift-share design, by discussing the measurement of trade exposure and its local labor market effects. It critically evaluates the validity and implications of the identification strategies used in this field, including the distinction between aggregate and distributional impacts, which is central to the project's theoretical and empirical axes. We review theoretical and empirical work on the economic effects of the United States and China trade relations during the past 20 years. We first discuss the origins of the China shock and its measurement and present methods used to study its economic effects on different outcomes. We then focus on the recent US–China trade war. We review methods used to evaluate its effects, describe its economic effects, and analyze whether this increase in trade protectionism reverted the effects of the China shock. The main lessons learned in this review are that (a) the aggregate gains from US–China trade created winners and losers; (b) China's trade expansion seems not to be the main cause of the...	Lorenzo Caliendo, Fernando Parro
8	2022	The Effects of Automation on Labor Demand ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation domain of the project by analyzing the labor demand effects of automation through firm-level mechanisms. It provides relevant empirical context and theoretical discussion on market size versus business stealing effects, which are central to understanding the structural foundations of robot adoption studies. In this article, we survey the recent literature and discuss two contrasting views on the impacts of automation on labor demand. A first view predicts that firms that automate reduce employment, even if this may ultimately result in job creations taking advantage of the lower equilibrium wage induced by job destructions. A second approach emphasizes the market size and business stealing effects of automation. Automating firms become more productive, which enables them to lower their quality-adjusted prices, and therefore to increase the demand for their products. The resulting increase in scale translates into higher employment by automating firms, potentially at the expense of their...	Philippe Aghion, Céline Antonin, Simon Bunel, et al.
8	2024	Help for the Heartland? The Employment and Electoral Effects of the Trump Tariffs in the United States ↗ This paper applies a shift-share design to analyze the local economic and political impacts of the Trump-era tariffs, directly engaging with the trade shock literature and its electoral consequences. It closely aligns with the project's empirical applications by examining local exposure to import competition and the resulting non-economic outcomes, such as political polarization. We study the economic and political consequences of the 2018-2019 trade war between the United States, China and other US trade partners at the detailed geographic level, exploiting measures of local exposure to US import tariffs, foreign retaliatory tariffs, and US compensation programs.The trade-war has not to date provided economic help to the US heartland: import tariffs on foreign goods neither raised nor lowered US employment in newly-protected sectors; retaliatory tariffs had clear negative employment impacts, primarily in agriculture; and these harms were only partly mitigated by compensatory US agricultural subsidies.Consistent with expressive views of politics, the tariff war...	David Autor, Anne Beck, David Dorn, et al.
8	2024	Did Trump’s trade war impact the 2018 election? ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) framework to analyze the political consequences of trade retaliation, a key empirical domain of the project. It complements the existing literature on labor market effects by providing evidence on how trade shocks influence electoral outcomes and polarization. We findthat Republican candidates lost support in the 2018 US congressional election in counties more exposed to trade retaliation, but saw no commensurate electoral gains from US tariff protection. The electoral losses were driven by retaliatory tariffs on agricultural products, and were only partially mitigated by the US agricultural subsidies announced in summer 2018. Republicans also fared worse in counties that had seen recent gains in health insurance coverage, affirming the importance of health care as an election issue. A counterfactual calculation suggests that the trade war (respectively, health care) can account for five (eight) of Republicans' lost House seats.	Emily J. Blanchard, Chad P. Bown, Davin Chor
8	2023	IT shields: Technology adoption and economic resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic ↗ This paper is closely related to the automation and IT adoption components of the project, as it utilizes an instrumental variable design rooted in historical industry composition to identify causal effects. It aligns with the task-based model framework by examining how pre-existing routine employment shares influence exposure to technological shocks and subsequent labor market resilience. We study the labor market effects of information technology (IT) during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, using data on IT adoption covering almost three million establishments in the US. We find that in areas where firms had adopted more IT before the pandemic, the unemployment rate rose less in response to social distancing. IT shields all individuals, regardless of gender and race, except those with the lowest educational attainment. Instrumental variable estimates–leveraging historical routine employment share as a booster of IT adoption– confirm IT had a causal impact on fostering labor markets’ resilience. Additional evidence suggests this shielding effect is due to the easiness of...	Myrto Oikonomou, Nicola Pierri, Yannick Timmer
8	2023	The empirics of technology, employment and occupations: Lessons learned and challenges ahead ↗ This paper critically reviews the empirical literature on technology and employment, directly addressing the methodological choices, proxies, and aggregation levels central to the research project's focus on automation and task-based models. It synthesizes lessons from studies involving robots, AI, and automation, providing valuable context on the challenges and heterogeneous findings inherent in estimating these effects using empirical designs like those discussed in the project. Abstract This paper is a critical review of the empirical literature resulting from recent years of debate and analysis regarding technology and employment and the future of work as threatened by technology, outlining both lessons learned and challenges ahead. We distinguish three waves of studies and relate their heterogeneous findings to the choice of technological proxies, the level of aggregation, the adopted research methodology and to the relative focus on robots, automation and AI. The challenges ahead include the need for awareness of possible ex‐ante biases associated with the adopted proxies for innovation; the recognition of the trade‐off between microeconometric precision and a...	Fabio Montobbio, Jacopo Staccioli, Maria Enrica Virgillito, et al.
8	2023	Artificial intelligence empowers enterprise innovation: evidence from China’s industrial enterprises ↗ This paper closely relates to the project's automation axis, specifically the intersection of AI/robotics adoption and firm-level innovation, which connects to the task-based model and robot adoption literature (e.g., Acemoglu & Restrepo). It provides empirical evidence on how AI integrates with the real economy, a key theme in understanding the broader effects of technological shocks discussed in the theoretical axis. Against the background of China’s economic transformation, it is of great practical significance to explore the impact of artificial intelligence on enterprise innovation to promote innovation-driven development strategies. Using patent data from Chinese industrial enterprises and robot data provided by the International Federation of Robotics, this study empirically tests the impact of artificial intelligence on improving the innovation abilities of Chinese enterprises. The study finds the following: (1) Artificial intelligence significantly improves enterprise innovation, and this conclusion remains valid after robustness tests. (2) Artificial intelligence optimizes the skill structure of...	Feng Han, Xin Mao
8	2024	Future jobs: analyzing the impact of artificial intelligence on employment and its mechanisms ↗ This paper directly addresses the project's theoretical axis by analyzing the employment effects of AI, a key emerging technology within the task-based model framework. It employs an instrumental variable approach to estimate local partial-equilibrium effects, aligning with the methodological focus on identifying causal impacts of technological shocks on labor markets. Technological innovation has promoted the development of human flourishing. Based on panel data for 30 provinces in China from 2006 to 2022, this study examines the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on manufacturing employment in China using the two-way fixed-effect model and the instrumental variable method. The study finds that contrary to the traditional impression of “machines replacing humans,” AI technology is correlated with increasing the total number of jobs on the market. Thanks to more efficient labor productivity, capital deepening, and specialized division of labor from integrating digital technology, AI offsets the negative effect of robots on employment and significantly...	Yang Shen
8	2020	Voter and Legislator Responses to Localized Trade Shocks from China in Brazil ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share instrumental variable framework, specifically the China shock literature, to analyze the political economy implications of localized trade exposure in Brazil. It extends the core empirical domain by examining how these shocks influence voter and legislator preferences, thereby addressing the political polarization and policy response dimensions central to the project's scope. This paper examines whether localized trade shocks from China influence Brazilians’ views on integration with the country. We test the following hypotheses: (1) as trade shocks are localized, views on trade should form at the local, rather than at the individual level, and (2) as localized trade shocks affect both workers and companies in a same region, they should also influence legislators’ views on China. Our analyses find support for both claims, but only among losers from Chinese trade. Residents and legislators from localities hurt by import shocks tend to hold negative views about economic ties with China, whereas neither residents nor legislators from localities benefitted by export...	Daniela Campello, Francisco Urdínez
8	2023	The impact of robots in Latin America: Evidence from local labor markets ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation/robots empirical application axis by estimating the labor market effects of robot adoption using a shift-share design across Latin American districts. It extends the core theoretical framework of task-based models and automation shocks to a new regional context, providing relevant cross-country evidence on unemployment, inequality, and skill distribution effects. We study the effects of robot penetration on labor markets for the three largest economies in Latin America: Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, during the period 2004-2016. We exploit the significant variability in robot exposure across districts and across time to estimate its impacts on several relevant outcomes. We find that districts more exposed to robotics adoption had a worse performance relative to less exposed ones in terms of unemployment, informality, earnings, inequality, and poverty. Our results also support the idea that the unemployment costs generated by the new technologies are relatively concentrated in the middle of the skill distribution. Finally, we also show that these...	Irene Brambilla, Andrés César, Guillermo Falcone, et al.
8	2018	Trade and labor markets: Lessons from China’s rise ↗ This paper directly addresses the 'China Shock' literature, which is a primary empirical application of the shift-share design studied in the project. It discusses the labor market consequences of trade exposure and policy remedies, providing essential context for the economic mechanisms underlying the methodological debates. International trade integration creates diffuse benefits and concentrated costs. Until recently, economists were sanguine about the limited practical relevance of theoretical implications for workers in developed countries. Evidence from the China Shock has overturned this benign view. China's rapid rise, while enormously positive for world welfare, has created identifiable losers in trade-impacted industries and the labor markets in which they are located. To mitigate the harms and share the benefits of trade integration more broadly, policymakers should consider modernizing trade adjustment programs, providing wage insurance to displaced workers, and expanding the set of workers eligible...	David Autor
8	2018	Understanding the decline in the U.S. labor share: Evidence from occupational tasks ↗ This paper directly applies the task-based framework central to the project, analyzing how occupational routine task content drives macroeconomic outcomes like the labor share decline. It connects to the automation and trade shock axes by empirically linking import competition to the replacement of routine occupations, providing key evidence on the mechanisms underlying shift-share style exposure indices. In this paper, I provide empirical evidence linking the decline in the labor share to the replacement of occupations with substantial routine task content. Using cross-industry variation, I show that the overall labor share decline is driven by the replacement of occupations specializing in routine tasks. I further find that the accelerated decline in the labor share since 2000 is associated with the replacement of higher skill occupations with substantial routine task content. Finally, I estimate the effects of increased import competition on the labor share decline and how this relates to the replacement of occupational tasks. While increased import competition plays a significant role in...	Christian vom Lehn
8	2021	Robotics technology and firm-level employment adjustment in Japan ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation/robots axis of the project by examining firm-level employment adjustments resulting from industrial robot adoption. It complements the core shift-share literature by providing granular, within-firm evidence on how technology shocks drive job creation and destruction, offering valuable empirical context to the theoretical mechanisms discussed. Abstract Unlike studies that analyze the impact of robotics technology on overall employment at the industry or firm level, this study investigated cross-division employment adjustment within a firm in an industry with greater diffusion and penetration of robotics technology. By examining changes in the composition of employment, we measured job creation and destruction at the division level and explored whether robotics technology, as a leading example of automation, not only displaces workers but also introduces new jobs in favor of labor. We made use of unique, division-level employment data for Japan’s manufacturing firms, together with industry-level data on the installation of...	Bin Ni, Ayako Obashi
8	2018	Wage and Employment Growth in America's Drug Epidemic: Is All Growth Created Equal? ↗ This paper directly applies the Bartik instrumental variable design to analyze the labor market mechanisms driving the opioid crisis, a key empirical application area for the project. It utilizes shift-share instruments to link local economic conditions to health outcomes, aligning closely with the methodological and application axes of the research. The rise in drug overdose deaths in the United States since the turn of the millennium has been extraordinary. A popular narrative paints a picture whereby opioid overdoses among white, male, less-educated, rural workers have been caused by reduced economic opportunities borne by such people. In this article, we causally test the validity of this theory by using Bartik-type variables to explore the relationship between local economic conditions and county opioid overdose death rates. We add to the literature by exploring how both employment and wage growth in different types of industries are related to opioid overdose deaths for the population as a whole, as well as for rural (vs. urban)...	Michael Betz, Lauren Jones	Other
8	2015	Robots at Work This paper is closely related as it provides foundational empirical evidence on the labor market effects of robot adoption, a key application area for shift-share designs. It utilizes task-based exposure measures to instrument for robot use, directly engaging with the task-based model and automation literature central to the project's theoretical and empirical axes. Despite ubiquitous discussions of robots' potential impact, there is almost no systematic empirical evidence on their economic effects. In this paper we analyze for the first time the economic impact of industrial robots, using new data on a panel of industries in 17 countries from 1993-2007. We find that industrial robots increased both labor productivity and value added. Our panel identification is robust to numerous controls, and we find similar results instrumenting increased robot use with a measure of workers' replaceability by robots, which is based on the tasks prevalent in industries before robots were widely employed. We calculate that the increased use of robots raised countries'...	Georg Graetz, Guy Michaels
8	2021	The refugee wave to Germany and its impact on crime ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share instrumental variable design to analyze the local labor market and social impacts of immigration, a core empirical application of the project. It specifically addresses the 'immigration' axis by examining how displacement patterns and refugee inflows affect crime rates, utilizing the methodological framework central to the researcher's interest in Bartik instruments and their identifying assumptions. Abstract Does migration cause crime? Drawing on recent migratory flows to Germany, I address this question by distinguishing two types of migrants: asylum seekers and recognized refugees. Using German administrative panel data from 2010 to 2015, I add to the literature by disentangling the direct crime impact of both groups from indirect crime responses from other citizens. For asylum seekers, I exploit dispersal policies and locational restrictions and find no causal impact on crime except for migration-specific offenses. For recognized refugees, who may endogenously move, I apply a shift-share instrument and find a positive association between the share of recognized refugees and the...	Fabian T. Dehos
8	2011	Local Labor Market Eects of Trade Policy: Evidence from Brazilian Liberalization This paper closely relates to the project's trade shock axis by applying a shift-share logic to estimate the local labor market effects of trade liberalization in Brazil. It aligns with the core methodological theme of using local industry composition to identify causal effects from national policy changes, serving as a key empirical example of the Bartik-style design. This paper measures the eects of Brazil’s 1987-1995 trade liberalization on local labor market wages and internal migration patterns. I develop a specic-factors model of regional economies to examine the impact of national price changes on local labor markets. In the model, a region’s industry mix determines the local impact of liberalization, with larger wage declines in regions where workers are concentrated in industries facing the largest tari cuts. I nd that regions whose output faced a 10% larger liberalization-induced price decline experienced a 9.4% larger wage decline. In addition, liberalization resulted in a shift in migration patterns. The most aected Brazilian states gained or...	Brian K. Kovak
8	2019	Re-evaluating the impact of immigration on the U.S. rental housing market ↗ This paper directly engages with the Bartik instrumental variable design, specifically addressing the critical methodological debate regarding endogenous local demand shocks that confounds immigration estimates. It contributes to the immigration application axis by proposing a refined identification strategy that controls for city-level attrition, thereby offering insights into the validity of shift-share instruments in labor market contexts. Previous studies provide evidence that immigration increases housing prices and rents. To deal with endogenous location choices of immigrants, these studies often use a shift-share instrumental variable approach. This approach, however, fails to adequately account for the natural attraction of immigrants to cities with thriving economies. High-immigration cities provide more economic opportunities and thus exhibit persistently rising housing prices and rents. This paper improves upon the traditional empirical approach by explicitly controlling for initial city characteristics that lead to both increases in immigration and the evolution of rents. Results suggest that after controlling for...	Jamie Sharpe
8	2017	Dampening General Equilibrium: From Micro to Macro ↗ This paper directly addresses the project's unifying concern regarding the distinction between local partial-equilibrium effects and aggregate general-equilibrium effects, offering structural insights into why GE adjustments may be weak or slow. By discussing how these dynamics help reduce the gap between micro estimates and macro effects, it provides relevant theoretical context for interpreting shift-share instrumental variable results within a broader general-equilibrium framework. We argue that standard modeling practices often overstate the potency of general-equilibrium (GE) mechanisms. We formalize the notion that GE adjustment is weak, or that it takes time, by modifying an elementary Walrasian economy in two alternative manners. In one, we replace Rational Expectations Equilibrium with solution concepts that mimic Ttonnement or Cobweb dynamics, Level-k Thinking, Reflective Equilibrium, and certain kinds of cognitive discounting. In the other, we maintain rational expectations but remove common knowledge of aggregate shocks and accommodate higher-order uncertainty. This permits us, not only to illustrate the broader plausibility of the notion that the GE...	George-Marios Angeletos, Chen Lian	Other
8	2006	The Impact of Immigration on the Employment of Natives in Regional Labour Markets: A Meta-Analysis ↗ [Title only] This paper directly addresses the immigration domain of the empirical applications axis, specifically focusing on local labor market effects which are a primary application of shift-share instruments like Card's enclave instrument. Although it is a meta-analysis rather than a primary theoretical or methodological paper on the Bartik design itself, it synthesizes evidence from the exact literature streams that rely on these identification strategies. No abstract available.	Simonetta Longhi, Peter Nijkamp, Jacques Poot
8	2020	Learning Occupational Task-Shares Dynamics for the Future of Work ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis of the project by examining dynamic changes in occupational task content driven by AI, a key component of the task-based model underlying shift-share designs. It contributes relevant empirical context on how technology exposure varies across occupations, which informs the construction and interpretation of Bartik-style exposure indices in the automation literature. The recent wave of AI and automation has been argued to differ from previous General Purpose Technologies (GPTs), in that it may lead to rapid change in occupations' underlying task requirements and persistent technological unemployment. In this paper, we apply a novel methodology of dynamic task shares to a large dataset of online job postings to explore how exactly occupational task demands have changed over the past decade of AI innovation, especially across high, mid and low wage occupations. Notably, big data and AI have risen significantly among high wage occupations since 2012 and 2016, respectively. We built an ARIMA model to predict future occupational task demands and showcase...	Subhro Das, Sebastian Steffen, Wyatt Clarke, et al.
8	2017	Chinese import competition, crime, and government transfers in US ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) design using Chinese import exposure to analyze local labor market outcomes, specifically crime and government transfers. It contributes to the China shock literature by extending the empirical analysis beyond traditional employment and wage metrics to include social outcomes and policy responses. This paper exploits the exogenous rise of Chinese imports in US to investigate the effect of import competition on crime at the county level. The results indicate that counties with high exposure to Chinese import competition have high crime rates. The exposure effect on property crime is much larger than that on violent crime. A one standard deviation increase in exposure causes 32 more violent crimes in the county, while such increase in exposure causes 256 more property crimes. Interestingly, we find that the crime impact of exposure to Chinese import competition becomes smaller in counties with high government transfers.	Yi Che, Xun Xu, Yan Zhang
8	2022	Fiscal multipliers in the COVID19 recession ↗ This paper directly engages with the fiscal policy application of the shift-share design, specifically estimating regional fiscal multipliers using local variation in government spending as in Nakamura & Steinsson (2014). It contributes to the empirical applications axis by analyzing how pandemic-specific constraints like lockdowns modify the transmission mechanisms of these fiscal shocks. In response to the record-breaking COVID19 recession, many governments have adopted unprecedented fiscal stimuli. While countercyclical fiscal policy is effective in fighting conventional recessions, little is known about the effectiveness of fiscal policy in the current environment with widespread shelter-in-place ("lockdown") policies and the associated considerable limits on economic activity. Using detailed regional variation in economic conditions, lockdown policies, and U.S. government spending, we document that the effects of government spending were stronger during the peak of the pandemic recession, but only in cities that were not subject to strong stay-at-home orders. We examine...	Alan J. Auerbach, Yuriy Gorodnichenko, Peter McCrory, et al.
8	2024	Tracking Firm Use of AI in Real Time: A Snapshot from the Business Trends and Outlook Survey ↗ This paper provides critical empirical measurement of AI adoption at the firm level, directly supporting the theoretical axis's discussion of AI-capability indices and task-exposure measures. It offers real-time data on how firms integrate AI, which is essential context for understanding the shift-share instruments used in automation literature to estimate labor market effects. Timely and accurate measurement of AI use by firms is both challenging and crucial for understanding the impacts of AI on the U.S. economy.We provide new, real-time estimates of current and expected future use of AI for business purposes based on the Business Trends and Outlook Survey for September 2023 to February 2024.During this period, bi-weekly estimates of AI use rate rose from 3.7% to 5.4%, with an expected rate of about 6.6% by early Fall 2024.The fraction of workers at businesses that use AI is higher, especially for large businesses and in the Information sector.AI use is higher in large firms but the relationship between AI use and firm size is non-monotonic.In contrast, AI use...	Kathryn R. Bonney, Cory Breaux, Cathy Buffington, et al.
8	2023	International trade and job polarization: Evidence at the worker level ↗ This paper closely relates to the trade shock axis by empirically investigating the labor market effects of import competition using employer-employee data, a key application of shift-share designs. It further connects to the theoretical axis by distinguishing the impact of trade shocks from routine-biased technological change using task content measures. We employ employer-employee matched data from Denmark and utilize plausibly exogenous variation in the rise of import competition due to the dismantling of import quotas as China entered the World Trade Organization to show, first, that rising import competition has led to reduced employment in mid-wage occupations compensated by an increased likelihood of employment in both low-wage and high-wage occupations. Workers with higher education are more likely to move from mid- to high-wage occupations due to trade compared to moving from mid- to low-wage occupations. Employing task content information of detailed occupations, we also show that workers performing manual tasks are the ones most...	Wolfgang Keller, Hâle Utar
8	2019	Is Automation Labor-Displacing in the Developing Countries, Too? Robots, Polarization, and Jobs ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation and robots axis of the project, extending the analysis to developing countries and examining the interaction between robot adoption and trade exposure. It contributes to the methodological discussion by controlling for Chinese import penetration, thereby engaging with the core shift-share instrumentation context while testing the generalizability of automation effects across different economic settings. This paper uses global census data to examine whether the labor market polarization and labor-displacing automation documented in the advanced countries appears in the developing world. While confirming both effects for the former, it finds little evidence for either in developing countries. In particular,the critical category corresponding to manufacturing worker, operators and assemblers has increased in absolute terms and as a share of the labor force. The paper then uses data on robot usage to explore its impact on the relative employment evolution in each sample controlling for Chinese import penetration. Trade competition appears largely irrelevant in both cases. Robots, however, are...	Carlos Molina, William F. Maloney
8	2017	Wage Effects of Haitian Migration in the Dominican Republic ↗ This paper is closely related to the immigration application of shift-share designs, specifically addressing the wage effects of immigrant inflows on native workers. It provides empirical context for the enclave instrument and complementarity/substitution dynamics central to the Card (2001) framework. Reviews the wage effects of Haitian migration in the Dominican Republic, delving into the complex, sensitive debate on whether labor market outcomes prove affected by migrants from neighboring Haiti, by testing whether higher Haitian immigration results in lower wages for local workers. The extent to which immigration affects wages in local labor markets remains determined by whether immigrants’ skills substitute or complement those of local workers. Because Haitian workers in the Dominican Republic remain highly clustered—in unskilled work categories, specific sectors, and geographic locations—no negative relationship exists between the proportion of the Haitian-born local labor force and...	Liliana D. Sousa, Diana R. Sanchez, Javier E. Báez
8	2022	Does robotization affect job quality? Evidence from European regional labor markets ↗ This paper applies the shift-share instrumental variable framework to study the effects of robot adoption, directly engaging with the automation axis and the methodological distinction regarding foreign-shift instruments. It extends the core literature by analyzing non-monetary job quality rather than just employment and wages, providing relevant empirical evidence within the project's scope. Whereas there are recent papers on the effect of robot adoption on employment and wages, there is no evidence on how robots affect non-monetary working conditions. We explore the impact of robot adoption on several domains of non-monetary working conditions in Europe over the period 1995-2005 combining information from the World Robotics Survey and the European Working Conditions Survey. In order to deal with the possible endogeneity of robot deployment, we employ an instrumental variables strategy, using the robot exposure by sector in other developed countries as an instrument. Our results indicate that robotization has a negative impact on the quality of work in the dimension of work...	José‐Ignacio Antón, Enrique Fernández‐Macías, Rudolf Winter‐Ebmer
8	2020	Labour market polarisation as a localised process: evidence from Sweden ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis concerning labour market polarisation and the task-based model, providing empirical evidence on how occupation-level exposure to technological shifts varies spatially. It offers valuable context for understanding the regional heterogeneity and localised impacts of polarization, which are key concerns in shift-share applications analyzing automation and trade shocks. Abstract The present article creates a link between contemporary labour market polarisation and regional divergence and analyses the spatial patterns of labour market polarisation in Swedish municipalities during the period 2002–2012. The results show that the national pattern of labour market polarisation is driven by polarisation in clusters of previously manufacturing-dominated municipalities with low- and medium-skill production, as well as increasing labour market polarisation and spatial selection within the fast-growing top-tier metropolitan regions. Outside these polarising spaces, most municipalities still experience job upgrading. The much-discussed abandonment of the traditional...	Martin Henning, Rikard Eriksson
8	2017	Horizontal and Vertical Polarization: Task-Specific Technological Change in a Multi-Sector Economy ↗ This paper is closely related as it provides a theoretical foundation for task-specific technological change and occupational polarization, directly linking to the theoretical axis of the project's task-based model. It complements the shift-share literature by offering a structural explanation for the differential impacts of technology on routine vs. non-routine tasks that underlie many Bartik-style exposure indices. We analyze the effect of technological change in a novel framework that integrates an economy's skill distribution with its occupational and industrial structure. Individuals become managers or workers based on their managerial vs. worker skills, and workers further sort into a continuum of tasks (occupations) ranked by skill content. Our theory dictates that faster technological progress for middle-skill tasks not only raises the employment shares and relative wages of lower-and higher-skill occupations among workers (horizontal polarization), but also raises those of managers over workers as a whole (vertical polarization). Both dimensions of polarization are faster within sectors that...	Sangyoon Lee, Yongseok Shin
8	2022	Import Competition and Household Debt ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share methodology using local industry exposure to Chinese import competition, a core design element of the researcher's project. It extends the empirical applications axis by investigating the under-explored channel of household debt and mortgage markets in response to trade shocks, complementing the standard labor market outcomes typically studied in the 'China shock' literature. ABSTRACT We analyze the effect of import competition on household balance sheets using individual data on consumer finances. We exploit variation in local industry exposure to foreign competition to study households' response to the income shock triggered by China's accession to the World Trade Organization. We show that household debt increases significantly in regions where manufacturing industries are more exposed to import competition. The effects are driven by home equity extraction and are concentrated in areas with strong house price growth. Our results highlight the role played by mortgage markets in absorbing displacement shocks triggered by globalization.	Jean-Noël Barrot, Erik Loualiche, Matthew Plosser, et al.
8	2022	Why does import competition favor republicans? Localized trade shocks and cultural backlash in the US ↗ This paper is closely related to the empirical applications axis, specifically the 'China shock' literature, as it investigates the political polarization effects of localized trade shocks using the standard shift-share instrument framework. It builds directly on the foundational work by Autor et al. while providing nuanced evidence on the cultural mechanisms driving right-wing political support. Evidence that local exposure to Chinese import competition favors right-wing parties has often been attributed to the success of economic nationalism. We test an alternative account. Trade shocks catalyze cultural backlash, which drives support for conservative candidates, as they compete electorally by targeting out-groups. We assess this hypothesis in the 2008–2016 US presidential elections. Using individual-level survey data, we provide evidence that Chinese import shocks drive negative attitudes towards minorities and positive feelings towards in-groups. Opinions about free trade and redistribution are not affected. Results indicate that this rightward shift is primarily driven by...	Federico Maria Ferrara
8	2024	New technologies and jobs in Europe ↗ This paper directly addresses the project's theoretical axis by empirically investigating the task-based model's predictions regarding AI exposure and labor market outcomes in Europe. It provides relevant cross-country evidence on how technology diffusion and institutional factors moderate the employment effects of new technologies, aligning with the automation literature discussed in the project scope. Summary We examine the link between labour market developments and new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and software in 16 European countries over the period 2011–9. Using data for occupations at the three-digit level, we find that on average employment shares have increased in occupations more exposed to AI. This is particularly the case for occupations with a relatively higher proportion of younger and skilled workers. While there exists heterogeneity across countries, only very few countries show a decline in employment shares of occupations more exposed to AI-enabled automation. Country heterogeneity for this result seems to be linked to the pace of technology diffusion...	Stefania Albanesi, António Dias da Silva, Juan F. Jimeno, et al.
8	2023	Occupational Exposure to Capital-Embodied Technical Change ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis by providing a novel measure of occupational exposure to capital-embodied technical change, complementing the task-based models and robot exposure indices central to the project. It offers key empirical evidence on labor reallocation driven by factor bias, which is a core mechanism in the automation and occupation-level shift-share literature. We study differences in exposure to factor-biased technical change among occupations by providing the first measures of capital-embodied technical change (CETC) and of the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor at the occupational level. We document sizable occupational heterogeneity in both measures, but quantitatively, it is the heterogeneity in factor substitutability that fuels workers’ exposure to CETC. In a general equilibrium model of worker sorting across occupations, CETC accounts for almost all of the observed labor reallocation in the US between 1984 and 2015. Absent occupational heterogeneity in factor substitutability, CETC accounts for only 17 percent of it (JEL...	Julieta Caunedo, David Jaume, Elisa Keller
8	2023	Sustainable growth through industrial robot diffusion: Quasi‐experimental evidence from a Bartik shift‐share design ↗ This paper applies the Bartik shift-share instrumental variable design to study the effects of industrial robot diffusion, directly engaging with the automation and methodological axes of the project. It extends the core literature by using this specific identification strategy to link robot adoption to sustainable growth and carbon emissions, offering relevant empirical context and methodological application. Abstract While the diffusion of industrial robots has had a significant impact on the economy and society, more research is needed to understand how robots contribute to sustainable growth. This study uses paired data on China's county‐level carbon emissions and industrial robot installations from 2008 to 2017, employing a Bartik shift‐share instrumental variable design to estimate the economic and sustainable effects of industrial robot diffusion. The study finds that industrial robots significantly promote economic growth and contribute to carbon emission reduction as confirmed by robust IV 2SLS and general PSM‐DID methods. Additionally, a heterogeneity analysis shows that industrial...	Qingyang Wu
8	2022	Industrial automation and intergenerational income mobility in the United States ↗ This paper directly addresses the project's empirical applications axis by examining the effects of robot adoption on labor market outcomes using local exposure to industrial robots. It provides relevant evidence on the distributional consequences of automation, a key theme within the task-based model and shift-share methodology discussed in the project. This article examines how the automation of jobs has shaped spatial patterns of intergenerational income mobility in the United States over the past three decades. Using data on the spread of industrial robots across 722 local labor markets, we find significantly lower rates of upward mobility in areas more exposed to automation. The erosion of mobility chances is rooted in childhood environments and is particularly evident among males growing up in low-income households. These findings reveal how recent technological advances have contributed to the unequal patterns of economic opportunity in the United States today.	Thor Berger, Per Engzell
8	2014	Local Labor Supply Responses to Immigration ↗ This paper directly addresses the immigration application axis by examining local labor supply responses to immigration, a key mechanism in Bartik-style instrumental variable designs. It provides empirical evidence on how native workers adjust to immigration shocks, which is central to understanding the validity of the exclusion restriction and the identification of local equilibrium effects. Abstract How natives adjust is central to an understanding of the impact of immigration in destination countries. Using detailed labor force data for Malaysia for 1990–2010, we provide estimates of native responses to immigration on multiple extensive margins and rare evidence for a developing country. Instrumental variable estimates show that increased immigration to a state causes substantial internal inward migration, consistent with the fact that immigration increases the demand for native workers. Relocating Malaysian workers are accompanied by their spouses (three‐quarters of whom are housewives) and children who attend school. We find that these effects are concentrated among middle‐...	Ximena Del Carpio, Çağlar Özden, Mauro Testaverde, et al.
8	2020	Persistent effects of initial labor market conditions: The case of China's tariff liberalization after WTO accession ↗ This paper applies a shift-share design using local industry composition weights to estimate the persistent wage effects of China's WTO tariff liberalization, directly aligning with the project's focus on trade shocks and the China shock literature. It addresses key empirical questions regarding local labor market impacts and cohort-specific outcomes, which are central themes in the methodological and applied axes of the research project. Abstract Using data from Urban Household Survey in China, we investigate the persistent effects of tariff reduction due to WTO accession on the wages of labor market new entrants. Our identification strategy exploits variations in the degrees of tariff reduction across industries, and variations in the pre-WTO industry composition of local employment across Chinese prefecture-level cities. We find that cohorts entering the labor market when regional tariffs are reduced tend to have relatively lower wages. Although these adverse effects of tariff reduction on job-entrants’ wages become weaker over time, they are still persistent after more than six years of labor market experience. We also...	Mi Dai, Wei Huang, Yifan Zhang
8	2021	Robots are not always bad for employment and wages ↗ This paper directly addresses the empirical applications axis of the project by evaluating the labor market effects of robot adoption using a shift-share-like approach in US commuting zones. It engages with the core methodological debates surrounding the Bartik instrument and contributes to the ongoing discourse on automation's net impact on employment and wages, which is a central theme of the researcher's project. We reassess the impact that robotization has on wages and employment, using a database on US commuting zones from 1990 to 2007. Using an argument based on the transitional dynamics we show that the negative displacement effects of robotization can be surpassed by productivity and reallocation effects, leading to positive effects on employment after a certain level of penetration in industry. In fact, we confirm this effect through regressions that are subject to different robustness checks. Previous evidence according to which robotization always decreases employment and wages are thus not confirmed.	Tiago Neves Sequeira, Susana Garrido Azevedo, Marcelo Santos
8	2018	Exposure to Chinese imports and media slant: Evidence from 147 U.S. local newspapers over 1998–2012 ↗ This paper is closely related as it employs a shift-share instrument to measure local exposure to Chinese imports, a core mechanism in the trade shock literature discussed in the project. It extends the empirical applications axis by examining the political and media consequences of such trade shocks, linking economic exposure to polarization and electoral outcomes. Does the recent surge in Chinese imports affect the media slant against China in the United States? Using a data set of 147 U.S. local newspapers over 1998–2012, this paper shows that newspapers whose circulation counties face greater exposure to Chinese imports report more negative news about China, and are more likely to endorse Democrats. The results hold with two identification strategies and three measures of media slant. The paper further shows that, in U.S. House and Senate elections between 2000 and 2012, media slant is associated with increased voting shares for Democrats, who are traditionally champions for the poor and critical of globalization.	Yi Lu, Xiang Shao, Zhigang Tao
8	2019	Quitting globalization: trade-related job losses, nationalism, and resistance to FDI in the United States ↗ This paper directly engages with the China shock literature by examining how local trade-related job losses shape political and social attitudes, a key downstream consequence of the trade exposure mechanisms analyzed in shift-share designs. It extends the empirical scope of the project by linking the economic exposure measures central to the design to broader outcomes like nationalism and resistance to foreign direct investment. Abstract Existing research has found that American politicians benefit from trying to attract investment and creates jobs. In this paper, we build on this work by describing the drivers of Americans' attitudes toward inward foreign investment (FDI). We posit that foreign and Chinese investment are different than domestic investment in the public imagination and that nationalism and proximity to deindustrialization interact to shape public opinion about them. We propose and test two theories of this interaction using a survey experiment that randomizes whether a respondent is responding to a statement about “business investment,” “foreign business investment,” or “Chinese business...	Yilang Feng, Andrew Kerner, Jane L. Sumner
8	2018	Trade-induced displacements and local labor market adjustments in the U.S. ↗ This paper closely aligns with the trade shock application axis by utilizing the China shock literature's core identification strategy via TAA and import penetration to estimate local labor market effects. It provides valuable context on the magnitude of displacement and general-equilibrium considerations such as geographic mobility and inequality, which are central concerns in the project. Administrative data from the U.S. Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program reveal that, across locations, one extra TAA trade-displaced worker is associated with the overall employment falling by about two workers amidst muted geographic mobility. This correlation is robust to local import penetration proxies and is corroborated using differences in the exposure of commuting zones to the plausibly exogenous normalization of U.S. trade relations with China in 2000. A Ricardian trade model with endogenous variable markups arising from head-to-head foreign competition can rationalize such a correlation. Following a trade liberalization shock, employment and earnings collapse in the less...	Illenin Kondo
8	2024	Local Economic and Political Effects of Trade Deals: Evidence from NAFTA ↗ This paper is closely related as it applies a shift-share logic based on industry exposure to analyze the political consequences of the NAFTA trade shock, a key empirical application within the project's scope. It directly addresses the China shock literature's extension into political polarization and voter behavior, aligning with the project's focus on local labor market effects and their broader societal impacts. Why have white, less-educated voters left the Democratic Party? We highlight the role of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In event-study analysis, we demonstrate that counties whose 1990 employment depended on industries vulnerable to NAFTA suffered large and persistent employment losses after its implementation. Voters in these counties (and protectionist voters regardless of geography) turned away from the party of President Clinton, who promoted the agreement. This shift is larger for whites (especially men and those without a college degree) and social conservatives, suggesting that racial identity and social-issue positions mediate reactions to economic policies...	Jiwon Choi, Ilyana Kuziemko, Ebonya Washington, et al.
8	2024	How industrial robots affect labor income share in task model: Evidence from Chinese A-share listed companies ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation axis of the project by estimating the impact of industrial robots on labor income shares using a Bartik-style instrumental variable approach consistent with the Acemoglu & Restrepo framework. It further integrates the task-based theoretical model to explore mechanisms such as induced technological progress and changes in the elasticity of substitution between robots and labor. This paper analyses the impact of the use of industrial robots on labor income shares at both the theoretical and empirical levels. On the theoretical side, the role of induced technological progress, the creation of new tasks, and the penetration of industrial robots on labor income shares are systematically explored by incorporating industrial robots into task models and endogenizing the task induced technological progress. Empirically, industrial robot penetration at the regional level in China is constructed from the industrial robots data released by the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), which is matched with Chinese A-share listed companies in 2011–2019, and the causal...	Junhong Du, Jiajia He, Jing Yang, et al.
8	2021	Skill of the immigrants and vote of the natives: Immigration and nationalism in European elections 2007–2016 ↗ This paper closely relates to the project by explicitly employing a shift-share (Bartik) instrumental variable design to study immigration, directly addressing the empirical applications axis. It further enriches the discussion by examining political polarization outcomes, a key theme in the trade and immigration shock literature, while utilizing the standard shares-based construction method central to the methodological debate. We analyze the impact of local immigration on natives’ preferences for “nationalism” as measured in parties’ programs by the Manifesto Project Database in European election data between 2007 and 2016. Using a 2SLS strategy with a shift-share IV based on immigrant shares by origin in 2005 and inflows by education-origin groups, we estimate that larger inflows of highly-educated immigrants were associated with a decrease in the “nationalistic” vote of natives, while less-educated immigrants produced an opposite-direction shift towards nationalistic parties. The aggregate results derive from individual shifts toward nationalism in response to less-skilled immigration, and from greater...	Simone Moriconi, Giovanni Peri, Riccardo Turati
8	2023	How will Language Modelers like ChatGPT Affect Occupations and Industries? ↗ This paper directly applies the task-exposure framework central to the project's theoretical axis, specifically focusing on LLM task-exposure measures as highlighted in the scope. It provides a systematic methodology for assessing occupational and industry exposure to AI, which aligns closely with the discussion of modern technology shock indices like those by Eloundou et al. Recent dramatic increases in AI language modeling capabilities has led to many questions about the effect of these technologies on the economy. In this paper we present a methodology to systematically assess the extent to which occupations, industries and geographies are exposed to advances in AI language modeling capabilities. We find that the top occupations exposed to language modeling include telemarketers and a variety of post-secondary teachers such as English language and literature, foreign language and literature, and history teachers. We find the top industries exposed to advances in language modeling are legal services and securities, commodities, and investments. We also find a...	E.W. Felten, Manav Raj, Robert Seamans
8	2024	Artificial intelligence and the skill premium: A numerical analysis of theoretical models ↗ This paper is closely related as it applies the task-based model framework central to the project to analyze the labor market effects of artificial intelligence, a key theme in the theoretical axis. It directly engages with the structural mechanisms connecting technology adoption to skill premiums, offering a numerical general equilibrium perspective that complements the shift-share empirical literature. As a new engine in guiding China's high-quality economic development, it is important to study whether the development of artificial intelligence (AI) will increase the skill premium and affect labor income inequality. Based on Acemoglu and Restrepo's (2018a) task-based model, this study constructs a multi-sector dynamic general equilibrium (DGE) model to analyze the impact and mechanism of AI on the skill premium and performs a numerical simulation using China's industrial panel data from 2010 to 2019. The results show that AI widens the skill premium by substituting low-skilled labor with industrial robots and performing high-skilled labor tasks. The mechanism analysis reveals that AI...	Can Cheng, Jiayu Luo, Chun Zhu, et al.
8	2025	AI and employment in Europe ↗ The paper directly addresses the project's empirical application axis concerning automation and AI, focusing on occupation-level exposure and labor market outcomes. It aligns with the task-based model framework by analyzing how AI capabilities differentially affect specific occupations, contributing to the understanding of technological disruption within the European context. This paper contributes to the growing research on AI's labour market impact by presenting novel evidence on the heterogeneous employment effects of AI across EU countries from 2012 to 2022. While concerns persist about AI's disruptive potential, our findings show that occupations more exposed to AI technologies experience stronger employment growth, all else being equal. However, these effects are not uniform across the EU. Positive employment outcomes are concentrated in Innovation Leaders (Belgium, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden) and Strong Innovators (Austria, Cyprus, France, Germany, Ireland and Luxembourg), emphasising the context-dependent nature of AI's impact. These...	Dario Guarascio, Jelena Reljic
8	2023	Do industrial robots affect the labour market? Evidence from China ↗ This paper directly applies the Bartik instrumental variable design to study the labor market effects of industrial robot adoption in China, aligning with the automation axis of the project. It provides empirical evidence on firm-level employment and skill-biased impacts, which are key mechanisms explored in the shift-share literature. Abstract The industrial robot is an essential part of modern manufacturing. Using micro‐level data, this study investigates the effects of industrial robots on the labour market in China. The results show that the adoption of industrial robots increases firm‐level employment by 31.65%. Using the Bartik method, we construct robot penetration as an instrumental variable of robot adoption to tackle endogenous problems. Our results stand up to a series of robustness checks. Moreover, the effects of robots are mainly owing to the expansion of the output scale, increased productivity, and upgraded products. We also find the skill‐biased impact of robots and the spillover effect of industrial...	Lihua Zhang, Tian Gan, Jiachen Fan
8	2023	Robot adoption and labor demand: A new interpretation from external competition ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation axis of the project by investigating the labor demand effects of robot adoption, a core topic associated with Acemoglu and Restrepo. It provides empirical evidence on how external competition drives firm-level robot adoption and impacts employment, offering a complementary perspective to the standard shift-share identification of technology shocks. Recent research has shown that robotics has increased economic efficiency in several areas. However, there is no consensus on whether the robot adoption in production should be encouraged, as there is widespread concern about unemployment and its consequences. This study compares the labor demands of robot adopters and non-adopters using a matching method. The results show that robotics increases rather than replace human labor, particularly providing the possibility of active hiring for female employees. However, while robots are installed in firms that implement robotics strategies, workers in non-adopting firms appear to be more vulnerable to the threat. Since robotics will widen the...	Qinan Zhang, Fanfan Zhang, Qiang Mai
8	2023	The Political Costs of Austerity ↗ This paper employs a Bartik-type instrument to estimate the causal effects of regional fiscal consolidation, directly aligning with the project's empirical applications axis on fiscal policy and shift-share designs. It utilizes the core methodology of combining regional exposures with national-level shocks to identify local treatment intensity, offering relevant insights into the political consequences of such exogenous spending changes. Abstract Using a novel regional database covering over 200 elections in several European countries, this article provides new empirical evidence on the political consequences of fiscal consolidations. To identify exogenous reductions in regional public spending, we use a Bartik-type instrument that combines regional sensitivities to changes in national government expenditures with narrative national consolidation episodes. Fiscal consolidations lead to a significant increase in extreme parties’ vote share, lower voter turnout, and a rise in political fragmentation. We highlight the close relationship between detrimental economic developments and voters’ support for extreme parties by...	Ricardo Duque Gabriel, Mathias Klein, Ana Sofia Pessoa
8	2017	Quasi-experimental impact estimates of immigrant labor supply shocks: The role of treatment and comparison group matching and relative skill composition ↗ This paper directly addresses the immigration axis of the project by utilizing a quasi-experimental immigration shock to estimate local labor market effects on native employment and wages. It complements the core shift-share literature by highlighting methodological refinements in matching and skill composition, which are critical for identifying causal effects in similar empirical settings. This paper examines the employment effects of a large burst of immigration—the politically-driven exodus of ethnic Turks from Bulgaria into Turkey in 1989. In some locations, the rise in the labor force due to this inflow of repatriates was 5–10%. The strong involvement of the Turkish state in the settlement of earlier waves of repatriates provides us a strong source of exogenous variation in the 1989 immigrant shock across locations and brings our study closer to an ideal natural experiment. We find that a 1% increase in the labor force due to repatriates increases the unemployment rate of native men by about 0.3 percentage points 14 months after the end of the repatriate flow. When the...	Abdurrahman Aydemir, Murat G. Kïrdar
8	2018	Impact of the Syrian refugee influx on Turkish native workers: An ethnic enclave approach ↗ This paper closely relates to the empirical applications axis by applying the ethnic enclave instrumental variable strategy, a core component of the Bartik literature, to analyze the labor market effects of immigration. It directly addresses the methodology and empirical context of migration-induced supply shocks, serving as a relevant parallel to the Card (2001) framework studied in the project. Turkey received about 2.7 million refugees between 2011 and 2015. This paper examines the causal relationship between the Syrian refugee induced increase in labor supply and natives’ labor market outcomes in Turkey using the micro level Household Labor Force Surveys. The migration impact is analyzed in two distinct categories considering the motives behind the migration decision. The initial migration to the border regions is assumed to be completely exogenous and defined as the primary migration. Hence, a standard difference in differences strategy is employed to estimate the labor market impacts in those regions. On the other hand, migration from the primary regions towards the inner...	Yusuf Kenan Bağır
8	2017	The Local Economic Impacts of Military Personnel ↗ This paper directly addresses the fiscal policy application of shift-share designs, specifically investigating the local economic effects of military spending changes, which is a core empirical domain of the project. It complements the existing literature on Nakamura and Steinsson (2014) by providing additional evidence on the equilibrium responses of labor and housing markets to military personnel contractions. I evaluate the local economic impacts of contractions in US military personnel between 1988 and 2000. I propose a novel empirical strategy combining the synthetic control and instrumental variables methods and estimate the causal effects on the equilibrium quantities and prices of local labor, housing, and product markets. Contractions in military personnel substantially reduced local civilian employment; however, local populations adjusted quickly, mainly through reduced in-migration, resulting in small changes in wages and large declines in rental prices. Relating these empirical findings to a simple spatial equilibrium model, I show that the welfare cost for workers is small.	Ben Zou
8	2022	On the Persistence of the China Shock ↗ This paper directly investigates the persistence of the China shock, a central topic within the trade shock applications of the shift-share design outlined in the project. It extends the core literature by analyzing long-term labor market and fiscal outcomes, providing critical evidence on the duration and magnitude of treatment effects beyond the initial exposure period. We evaluate the duration of the China trade shock and its impact on a wide range of outcomes over the period 2000 to 2019. The shock plateaued in 2010, enabling analysis of its effects for nearly a decade past its culmination. Adverse impacts of import competition on manufacturing employment, overall employment-population ratios, and income per capita in more trade-exposed U.S. commuting zones are present out to 2019. Over the full study period, greater import competition implies a reduction in the manufacturing employment-population ratio of 1.54 percentage points, which is 55% of the observed change in the value, and the absorption of 86% of this net job loss via a corresponding decrease...	David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon Hanson
8	2010	The effect of immigrants on U.S. employment and productivity This paper is closely related to the project's empirical applications axis, specifically the immigration literature which employs shift-share designs like the enclave instrument. It addresses the core economic question of immigrant effects on native employment and wages, a key domain studied using Bartik-style instruments in the research project. The effects of immigration on the total output and income of the U.S. economy can be studied by comparing output per worker and employment in states that have had large immigrant inflows with data from states that have few new foreign-born workers. Statistical analysis of state-level data shows that immigrants expand the economy’s productive capacity by stimulating investment and promoting specialization. This produces efficiency gains and boosts income per worker. At the same time, evidence is scant that immigrants diminish the employment opportunities of U.S.-born workers. Immigration in recent decades has significantly increased the presence of foreign-born workers in the United States...	Giovanni Peri
8	2008	The Labor Market Impact of Immigration in Western Germany in the 1990's ↗ This paper is closely related to the immigration application of shift-share instruments, specifically addressing the local labor market effects of immigration on wages and employment. While it uses a general equilibrium approach rather than a standard Bartik IV, it engages with the core empirical questions and findings central to the immigration axis of the project. We adopt a general equilibrium approach in order to measure the effects of recent immigration on the Western German labor market, looking at both wage and employment effects. Using the Regional File of the IAB Employment Subsample for the period 1987-2001, we find that the substantial immigration of the 1990's had no adverse effects on native wages and employment levels. It had instead adverse employment and wage effects on previous waves of immigrants. This stems from the fact that, after controlling for education and experience levels, native and migrant workers appear to be imperfect substitutes whereas new and old immigrants exhibit perfect substitutability. Our analysis suggests that...	Francesco D’Amuri, Gianmarco I.P. Ottaviano, Giovanni Peri
8	2021	Routine-biased technological change does not always lead to polarisation: Evidence from 10 OECD countries, 1995–2013 ↗ This paper critically examines the routine-biased technological change framework, which underpins the task-based models and occupation-level exposure indices central to the project's theoretical axis. By challenging the universal applicability of occupational polarization predictions across OECD countries, it provides essential nuance and background for understanding the limits and generalizability of these structural mechanisms. Abstract This article deals with a central paradox in the occupational polarisation literature: most scholars accept that technological change is biased against routine-intensive occupations, but in many countries, we do not see the pattern of occupational polarisation that the theory usually predicts. I argue and show empirically using a dataset of 10 OECD countries between 1995 and 2013 that technological change is both routine-biased and skill-biased, but that the result of routine-biased technological change may be occupational upgrading rather than polarisation. This is due to differences in occupational routine-wage hierarchies: only where routine occupations cluster around the middle...	Matthias Haslberger
8	2018	Job polarization and labour supply changes in the UK ↗ This paper applies a shift-share design exploiting local specialization in routine-intensive activities to identify the effects of technological exposure, directly aligning with the project's focus on automation and task-based models. It provides empirical context on job polarization in the UK, which relates to the theoretical axis of occupation-level exposure indices and the empirical application of automation effects. Abstract This paper investigates the effect of technological exposure on UK employment polarization during 1993–2014. The identification strategy exploits variation across local labour markets in the historical specialization in routine-intensive activities. The Routine Biased Technical Change hypothesis is tested and only partly corroborated. Strikingly, I find no effect of technological exposure on the growth of high-skilled non-routine cognitive jobs. I claim that the rapid educational upgrading of the 1990s may help explain this result. This is supported by evidence of a marked increase in outflows of both graduates and non-graduates from the top moving down the occupational ladder...	Giulia Montresor
8	2023	Labour‐saving automation: A direct measure of occupational exposure ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis of the project by developing a novel, direct measure of occupational exposure to automation using patent-text overlap and task descriptions, which aligns with the methodological innovations discussed. It provides empirical context relevant to the automation/robots application domain and extends the understanding of how technology shocks differentially affect tasks, a core mechanism in the shift-share design literature. Abstract This article represents one of the first attempts at building a direct measure of occupational exposure to robotic labour‐saving technologies. After identifying robotic and labour‐saving robotic patents, the underlying 4‐digit CPC (Cooperative Patent Classification) code definitions, together with O*NET (Occupational Information Network) task descriptions, are employed to detect functions and operations which are more directed to substituting the labour input and their exposure to labour‐saving automation. This measure allows us to obtain fine‐grained information on tasks and occupations according to their text similarity ranking. Occupational exposure by wage and employment...	Fabio Montobbio, Jacopo Staccioli, Maria Enrica Virgillito, et al.
8	2021	Technology, Vintage-Specific Human Capital, and Labor Displacement: Evidence from Linking Patents with Occupations ↗ This paper is closely related as it constructs an occupation-level exposure index using patent-text overlap, a key mechanism within the theoretical axis of the project. It provides empirical evidence on technology-driven displacement that aligns with the task-based model and the study of automation shocks' impact on labor market outcomes. We develop a measure of workers' technology exposure that relies only on textual descriptions of patent documents and the tasks performed by workers in an occupation. Our measure appears to identify a combination of labor-saving innovations but also technologies that may require skills that incumbent workers lack. Using a panel of administrative data, we examine how subsequent worker earnings relate to workers' technology exposure. We find that workers at both the bottom but also the top of the earnings distribution are displaced. Our interpretation is that low-paid workers are displaced as their tasks are automated while the highest-paid workers face lower earnings growth as some of their...	Leonid Kogan, Dimitris Papanikolaou, Lawrence Schmidt, et al.
8	2020	Digitization-based automation and occupational dynamics ↗ This paper directly addresses the project's empirical focus on automation and its labor market effects, specifically examining the decline in employment and wage shares for occupations with high automation risk in Sweden. It aligns with the theoretical axis concerning task-based models and occupational dynamics, providing international evidence that complements the primary US-centric literature discussed in the project scope. We examine the relationship between occupational automation probabilities and employment dynamics over nearly two decades. We show that employment and wage shares of occupations with a higher automation risk have declined in Sweden over the period 1996-2013. This has occurred both at the aggregate private business sector but also within firms, where the wage share changes have been larger than the employment share changes. Combining the automation risk in workers’ occupations with individual worker characteristics, we find substantial heterogeneity. This includes that education dampens the automation risk of workers, as the average automation probability of low-skilled workers is almost...	Malin Gardberg, Fredrik Heyman, Pehr-Johan Norbäck, et al.
8	2021	Worker and firm responses to trade shocks: The UK-China case ↗ This paper is closely related as it applies the shift-share (Bartik) methodology to analyze the labor market impacts of trade shocks from China in the UK context. It provides valuable empirical evidence on worker and firm responses to import competition, directly addressing key mechanisms within the trade shocks axis of the research project. We exploit the recent surge in Chinese export growth to study the effects of a trade shock on a foreign market - the UK. We find that individuals initially employed in sectors highly exposed to Chinese imports earned less and remained out of employment longer than workers in sectors that were less exposed to import competition in the period 2000-2007. Earnings losses were most severe when workers remained in the same industry, whereas those who switched out of their 2-digit sector were able to mitigate these losses. The effects are heterogeneous across the distribution of earnings within the same age cohort, with initially better-paid workers suffering less in terms of employment and...	Josh De Lyon, João Paulo Pessoa
8	2020	Trade, technology, and the channels of wage inequality ↗ This paper directly addresses the trade shock literature, a core empirical application of the shift-share design, by analyzing the wage effects of import competition from China and Eastern Europe. It provides relevant evidence on the channels through which such shocks affect inequality, complementing the project's focus on the labor market impacts of trade exposure. Abstract We use a large sample of German workers to analyse whether low-wage competition with China and Eastern Europe (the East) affects the wage structure within German manufacturing industries. In order to identify the channels through which trade and technology affect wage inequality, we decompose wages into firm and worker components. We find that the rise of market access and the competitiveness of the East has a substantial impact on inequality via the worker-wage component. While we find no large effect of the firm effect and assortative matching on overall inequality we find that trade induced matching is relevant for high-tech industries. We also account for exposure to...	Linda Borrs, Florian Knauth
8	2023	Does robotization improve the skill structure? The role of job displacement and structural transformation ↗ This paper is closely related as it applies the task-based model and automation literature to analyze how robot adoption affects labor market outcomes, specifically skill structure and polarization, in a developing country context. It extends the core empirical applications of the project by investigating the mechanisms of job displacement and structural transformation, which are central to understanding the general equilibrium implications of robotization shocks. The literature generally focuses on the impact of robots or artificial intelligence on the employment and wages, but ignores the effect of robotization on the skill structure and its underlying mechanisms and lacks empirical evidence from developing countries. We theoretically develop a task model by introducing the skill structure and empirically investigate the effect of robotization on the skill structure based on Chinese provincial panel data from 2006 to 2018. Results show that: (1) the development of robotization in China is conducive to improving the skill structure, and the baseline conclusion still holds even though adopting multiple indexes of skill structure and controlling the...	Shengming Hu, Kai Lin, Bei Liu, et al.
8	2023	Who is Replaced by Robots? Robotization and the Risk of Unemployment for Different Types of Workers ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation axis of the project by examining the effects of robot adoption on unemployment risk, utilizing a task-based framework consistent with the theoretical underpinnings of the research. It provides relevant empirical evidence on how different worker types and occupations are affected by industrial robots, aligning closely with the study of local labor market impacts and skill-biased technological change. We study the effects of robotization on unemployment risk for different types of workers. We examine the extent to which robotization increases inequality at the skill level and at the occupational level using two theoretical frameworks: skill-biased technological change and task-biased technological change. Empirically, we combine worker-level data with information on actual investments in industrial robots. Zooming in on the German manufacturing industry, our multivariate results show that robotization affects different types of workers differently. We do not observe an increase in unemployment risk for low- and medium-skilled, but we find a considerably lower unemployment risk among...	Andreas Damelang, Michael Otto
8	2025	Winners and losers of generative AI: Early Evidence of Shifts in Freelancer Demand ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis of the project by providing empirical evidence on how Large Language Models (LLMs) differentially affect labor demand across tasks, aligning with the task-based model and LLM task-exposure measures. It extends the automation literature by applying exposure-based analysis to the emerging domain of generative AI in freelance markets. We examine how ChatGPT has changed the demand for freelancers in jobs where generative AI tools can act as substitutes or complements to human labor. Using BERTopic we partition job postings from a leading online freelancing platform into 116 fine-grained skill clusters and with GPT-4o we classify them as substitutable, complementary or unaffected by LLMs. Our analysis reveals that labor demand increased after the launch of ChatGPT, but only in skill clusters that were complementary to or unaffected by the AI tool. In contrast, demand for substitutable skills, such as writing and translation, decreased by 20–50% relative to the counterfactual trend, with the sharpest decline observed for...	Ole Teutloff, Johanna Einsiedler, otto kässi, et al.
8	2023	Automated Deindustrialization: How Global Robotization Affects Emerging Economies—Evidence from Brazil ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share Bartik instrumental variable framework to the automation domain, mirroring the structure of the Acemoglu & Restrepo (2020) design studied in the project. It provides valuable empirical evidence on foreign robot shocks and their labor market effects in an emerging economy context, aligning closely with the project's focus on automation mechanisms and identification strategies. There are growing concerns that automation technology may have far-reaching implications for development, by restructuring global value chains and substituting workers. This paper investigates how domestic and foreign automation impact a resource-rich emerging economy. The empirical analysis builds on a Ricardian model of trade and a shift-share approach. Differences in regional industrial compositions are used to translate domestic industry-level robot adoption to local labor markets in Brazil. Differential trade and inter-sectoral input–output linkages between a foreign industry and regions in Brazil are leveraged to construct a measure of exposure to foreign automation. Instrumental...	Henry Stemmler
8	2015	Rise of the Machines: The Effects of Labor-Saving Innovations on Jobs and Wages ↗ This paper is closely related to the project as it directly addresses the theoretical axis concerning labor-saving innovations and task-based models that underpin automation literature. It provides foundational context for the Acemoglu & Restrepo framework and the occupation-level shift-share designs by explaining the mechanisms of job polarization and task automation. How do firms respond to technological advances that facilitate the automation of tasks? Which tasks will they automate, and what types of worker will be replaced as a result? We present a model that distinguishes between a task's engineering complexity and its training requirements. When two tasks are equally complex, firms will automate the task that requires more training and in which labor is hence more expensive. Under quite general conditions this leads to job polarization, a decline in middle wage jobs relative to both high and low wage jobs. Our theory explains recent and historical instances of job polarization as caused by labor-replacing technologies, such as computers, the...	Georg Graetz
8	2021	The impact of Chinese import competition on Italian manufacturing ↗ This paper applies the shift-share design to study the labor market effects of the China shock in Italy, directly addressing the core empirical application of the project. It provides relevant international evidence on local exposure, employment losses, and worker transitions, which aligns with the trade shock literature and general-equilibrium considerations. Abstract This paper documents the effects of increased import competition from China on the Italian labor market. In line with recent studies, we take two complementary approaches and study both the effects on local labor markets and on manufacturing workers. Our analysis shows that the Italian local labor markets which were more exposed to Chinese trade by means of their industry composition ended up suffering larger manufacturing and overall employment losses. Nevertheless, back‐of‐the‐envelope calculations suggest that the aggregate effect on total manufacturing employment is modest. At the individual level, contrary to what has been documented for many developed countries, workers...	Luca Citino, Andrea Linarello
8	2020	Trade with Nominal Rigidities: Understanding the Unemployment and Welfare Effects of the China Shock ↗ This paper is closely related as it addresses the China shock literature and explicitly incorporates local labor market dynamics and welfare effects, aligning with the project's interest in the general equilibrium implications of trade shocks. It provides a structural perspective on the nominal rigidities that may influence the partial-equilibrium estimates generated by shift-share instruments. We present a dynamic quantitative trade and migration model that incorporates downward nominal wage rigidities and show how this framework can generate changes in unemployment and labor force participation that match those uncovered by the empirical literature studying the "China shock." We find that the China shock leads to average welfare increases in most U.S. states, including many that experience elevated unemployment during the transition. However, nominal rigidities reduce the overall U.S. gains by more than one fourth. In addition, there are seven states that experience welfare losses in the presence of downward nominal wage rigidity that would have experienced gains without it.	Andrés Rodrı́guez-Clare, Mauricio Ulate, Jose P. Vasquez
8	2022	Do robots really destroy jobs? Evidence from Europe ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation axis of the project by estimating the causal effect of robot adoption on employment, a core empirical application of shift-share methods. It provides relevant European evidence that complements the foundational US-based studies like Acemoglu & Restrepo (2020), offering comparative insights into the labor market impacts of technological shocks. While citizen opinion polls reveal that Europeans are concerned about the labour market consequences of technological progress, our understanding of the actual significance of this association is still imperfect. In this article, the authors assess the relationship between robot adoption and employment in Europe. Combining industry-level data on employment by skill type with data on robot adoption and using different sets of fixed-effects techniques, the study finds that robot use is associated with an increase in aggregate employment. Contrary to some previous studies, the authors do not find evidence of robots reducing the share of low-skill workers across Europe. Since the overwhelming...	David Klenert, Enrique Fernández‐Macías, José‐Ignacio Antón
8	2023	The artificial intelligence shock and socio-political polarization ↗ This paper directly applies the task-based shift-share design to analyze the socio-political consequences of AI exposure, extending the theoretical axis of the project to include political polarization. It utilizes established AI-exposure indices (Webb 2019, Manyika 2017) akin to the occupational exposure measures discussed in the project, providing relevant empirical context on the broader impacts of automation shocks. Are artificial intelligence's complimenting and displacing labor market effects corresponding with similar polarization in socio-political beliefs? This study answers this question by analyzing survey data of 26,311 Americans, collected from the American National Election Survey. Data is deployed alongside 22-category Manyika et al. (2017) ‘automation potential’ estimates (proxying for ‘displacement due to AI’) and Michael Webb (2019) ‘AI-exposure’ estimates (proxying for labor complimented by AI). The study summarizes the demographic characteristics and socio-political views of the highly AI-exposed and automation-susceptible groups. It deploys a year and region fixed effects OLS model...	Julian Jacobs
8	2021	The effects of trade-induced worker displacement on health and mortality in Mexico ↗ This paper applies the shift-share design to analyze the health impacts of trade shocks in Mexico, directly aligning with the project's focus on the China shock literature and labor market outcomes. It extends the methodological framework by applying shift-share instruments to mortality and health metrics in a developing country context. Recent research in the U.S. links trade-induced job displacement to deaths of despair. Should we expect the same mortality response in developing countries? This paper analyzes the effect of a trade-induced negative shock to manufacturing employment on leading causes of mortality in Mexico between 1998 and 2013. I exploit cross-municipality variation in trade exposure based on differences in industry specialization before China's accession to the WTO in 2001 to identify labor-demand shocks that are concentrated in manufacturing. I find trade-induced job loss increased mortality from diabetes, raised obesity rates, reduced physical activity, and lowered access to health insurance. These...	Sofía Fernández Guerrico
8	2022	Hollowing out of opportunity: Automation technology and intergenerational mobility in the United States ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation axis of the project by examining the labor market effects of technological substitution using spatial variation in exposure, a core application of shift-share designs. It extends the standard Acemoglu & Restrepo framework to investigate intergenerational mobility, providing relevant empirical context on the consequences of robot adoption and task-based polarization. Recent automation technology has lead to job polarization in the U.S. labour market since 1980. Middle-skill jobs, which provide decent wages for relatively uneducated people, have been shrinking in terms of employment share, pushing those workers into low-wage service jobs. In this paper, by exploiting spatial variation in the exposure to technological substitution, I provide suggestive evidence that automation technology has contributed to the decline of upward mobility of children from poor and middle-class families. My analysis suggests that middle-skill jobs are an indispensable channel for disadvantaged children to move upward. In addition, this paper provides a plausible explanation...	Ningning Guo
8	2021	Regional Consumption Responses and the Aggregate Fiscal Multiplier ↗ This paper directly addresses the fiscal policy application of shift-share instruments by using regional variation in government spending to estimate local multipliers, a core empirical domain of the project. It further bridges the gap between local partial-equilibrium estimates and aggregate general-equilibrium effects, which is identified as a unifying theoretical concern in the research proposal. We use regional variation in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (2009-2012) to analyze the effect of government spending on consumer spending. Our consumption data come from household-level retail purchases in Nielsen and auto purchases from Equifax credit balances. We estimate that a $1 increase in county-level government spending increases consumer spending by $0.29. We translate the regional consumption responses to an aggregate fiscal multiplier using a multi-region, New Keynesian model with heterogeneous agents and incomplete markets. Our model successfully generates the estimated positive local multiplier, a result that distinguishes our incomplete markets model from models...	Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Bill Dupor, Marios Karabarbounis, et al.
8	2017	Firm Reorganization, Chinese Imports, and US Manufacturing Employment This paper directly addresses the China shock literature by analyzing firm-level responses to import competition, a core empirical domain of the project. It extends the standard shift-share narrative by highlighting firm reorganization and cost reductions, providing crucial micro-foundations for understanding aggregate labor market outcomes. What is the impact of Chinese imports on employment of US manufacturing firms? Previous papers have found a negative effect of Chinese imports on employment in US manufacturing establishments, industries, and regions. However, I show theoretically and empirically that the impact of offshoring on firms, which can be thought of as collections of establishments – differs from the impact on individual establishments - because offshoring reduces costs at the firm level. These cost reductions can result in firms expanding their total manufacturing employment in industries in which the US has a comparative advantage relative to China, even as specific establishments within the firm shrink. Using...	Ildikó Magyari
8	2022	The German Trade Shock and the Rise of the Neo-Welfare State in Early Twentieth-Century Britain ↗ This paper closely aligns with the trade shock literature and the shift-share (Bartik) instrumental variable design by employing a shift-share measure of local exposure to imports to identify causal effects. It applies the method to political and social outcomes, contributing to the empirical context of how labor market shocks from foreign competition drive structural changes, similar to the China shock literature. We study the international origins of the neo-welfare state in Britain during the era of globalization before World War I. We introduce a new mechanism linking trade to the expansion of the state. In addition to increasing assessments of the volatility of employment in a market economy, trade shocks changed beliefs about the deservingness of the poor. Employing a shift-share measure of local exposure to German imports, we show that rising imports caused worse labor market outcomes from 1880 to 1910. Import competition led to a decrease in support for the Conservative Party in national elections after 1900, when the Liberal Party supported welfare state reforms. We further show that rising...	Kenneth F. Scheve, Theo Serlin
8	2022	How Are Patented AI, Software and Robot Technologies Related to Wage Changes in the United States? ↗ This paper directly engages with the task-based model and automation literature central to the project, utilizing patent-text exposure measures analogous to the shift-share instruments discussed in the theoretical axis. It extends the core empirical context by comparing AI exposure to traditional robot and software adoption, addressing key mechanisms regarding displacement versus productivity effects on wages. We analyze the relationships of three different types of patented technologies, namely artificial intelligence, software and industrial robots, with individual-level wage changes in the United States from 2011 to 2021. The aim of the study is to investigate if the availability of AI technologies is associated with increases or decreases in individual workers' wages and how this association compares to previous innovations related to software and industrial robots. Our analysis is based on available indicators extracted from the text of patents to measure the exposure of occupations to these three types of technologies. We combine data on individual wages for the United States with the new...	Frank M. Fossen, Daniel Samaan, Alina Sorgner
8	2021	Economic downturns and mental health in Germany ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share IV design using regional industry composition to instrument for macroeconomic fluctuations, aligning with the methodological framework studied in the project. It contributes to the empirical applications axis by demonstrating a specific outcome (mental health) driven by the predicted local exposure to economic shocks, a key mechanism in the literature. Abstract We study the impact of the macroeconomic environment on mental health in Germany. Endogeneity concerns are tackled using a shift-share instrumental variables approach in which exposure to macroeconomic fluctuations is estimated from regional variations in historical industry sector composition. Estimation results reveal strong procyclical effects on the 12-item short form survey’s mental health component summary score. These results are supported by corresponding estimates for self-assessed life satisfaction and objective mental health-related hospitalizations. Effects mainly operate through worries about future job loss and income reductions, while actual unemployment and income...	Daniel Avdic, Sonja C. de New, Daniel Kamhöfer
8	2023	Technology and Labor Displacement: Evidence from Linking Patents with Worker-Level Data ↗ This paper directly aligns with the theoretical axis by developing occupation-level exposure indices using patent-text analysis, a key methodological component of the shift-share design in automation literature. It provides empirical evidence on worker-level displacement and earnings, addressing the core themes of labor market effects from technological shocks central to the project. We develop measures of labor-saving and labor-augmenting technology exposure using textual analysis of patents and job tasks. Using US administrative data, we show that both measures negatively predict earnings growth of individual incumbent workers. While labor-saving technologies predict earnings declines and higher likelihood of job loss for all workers, labor-augmenting technologies primarily predict losses for older or highly-paid workers. However, we find positive effects of labor-augmenting technologies on occupation-level employment and wage bills. A model featuring labor-saving and labor-augmenting technologies with vintage-specific human capital quantitatively matches these...	Leonid Kogan, Dimitris Papanikolaou, Lawrence Schmidt, et al.
8	2022	The Remainder Effect: How Automation Complements Labor Quality ↗ This paper directly extends the Acemoglu-Restrepo task-based model, a core theoretical component of the project, by incorporating labor quality to explain how automation complements detailed skills. It provides relevant empirical evidence on the wage and skill demand effects of automation, addressing key mechanisms in the project's automation axis. Using help-wanted ad data, this paper argues that automation increases demand for detailed skills that are typically unobserved, but which are major determinants of pay. Following automation events, we find that employers request more detailed skills and they substantially increase pay offers (8.7%). Importantly, these increases are not limited to select occupational groups—they apply to both routine and non-routine jobs, to jobs requiring college and those that do not. To explain this phenomenon, we extend the Acemoglu-Restrepo task-based model of automation to consider labor quality, which depends on workers having task-specific skills. We obtain a Remainder Effect: when automation...	James Bessen, Erich Denk, Meng Chen
8	2023	International Trade and Job Polarization: Evidence at the Worker Level ↗ This paper is closely related as it applies the trade shock framework to analyze job polarization, specifically investigating the interplay between import competition and task content in a worker-level setting. It directly addresses the empirical application axis by distinguishing the effects of trade shocks from automation, thereby contributing to the theoretical understanding of task-based models and their labor market outcomes. We employ employer-employee matched data from Denmark and utilize plausibly exogenous variation in the rise of import competition due to the dismantling of import quotas as China entered the World Trade Organization to show, first, that rising import competition has led to reduced employment in mid-wage occupations compensated by an increased likelihood of employment in both low-wage and high-wage occupations. Workers with higher education are more likely to move from mid- to high-wage occupations due to trade compared to moving from mid- to low-wage occupations. Employing task content information of detailed occupations, we also show that workers performing manual tasks are the ones most...	Wolfgang Keller, Hâle Utar
8	2019	Behind the Headline Number: Why not to Rely on Frey and Osborne’s Predictions of Potential Job Loss from Automation ↗ This paper critically evaluates a foundational study on occupation-level automation exposure, directly engaging with the theoretical axis regarding task-based measures of technological impact. It provides relevant context and methodological critique for the construction and validation of shift-share instruments based on automation risk, which is central to the project's empirical applications in the automation domain. We review a highly influential study that estimated potential job loss from advances in Artificial Intelligence and robotics: Frey and Osborne (FO) (2013, 2017) concluded that 47 per cent of jobs in the United States were at ‘high risk’ of automation in the next 10 to 20 years. First, we investigate FO’s methodology for estimating job loss. Several major problems and limitations are revealed; especially associated with the subjective designation of occupations as fully automatable. Second, we examine whether FO’s predictions can explain occupation-level changes in employment in the United States from 2013 to 2018. Compared to standard approaches which classify jobs based on their intensity...	Michael Coelli, Jeff Borland
8	2023	The impact of fiscal stimulus on employment: Evidence from China’s four-trillion RMB package ↗ This paper directly applies the Bartik instrumental variable design to estimate local fiscal multipliers, aligning with the project's empirical axis on fiscal policy and methodological focus on shift-share instruments. It utilizes industry-based variation to identify the causal effect of government spending, a core application area discussed in the context of Nakamura and Steinsson's work. Despite the large body of work re-estimating the impact of fiscal stimulus on employment in developed countries by using cross-sectional analysis, little evidence exists for China in this fashion. Adopting a sample of China's 318 prefecture-level data between 2008 and 2010, I implement Bartik instrumental variable method inspired by China's “four-trillion package” to estimate the causal effect of local fiscal spending on employment in China during recession. My findings reveal that every 100,000 CNY creates 2.2 to 3.4 jobs, implying 29,411 to 45,454 CNY (4,237 to 6,549 in USD) cost per job-year saved. These costs are lower than those estimated for Australia, Brazil and Germany. I further...	Yanchi Zou
8	2024	Diverging paths: AI exposure and employment across European regions ↗ This paper applies the theoretical framework of task-based technology exposure to the specific context of AI, aligning with the project's interest in occupation-level exposure indices and the automation/automation axis. It extends the shift-share logic to regional disparities in AI readiness, offering relevant empirical context for understanding how technology shocks affect local labor markets through structural channels. • This study explores AI exposure and employment patterns in European regions. • Regional clusters highlight disparities in AI readiness and economic structures. • Innovation, skills and specialisation may shape regional impacts of AI. • In high-tech service and capital centres, AI could potentially complement labour. • AI might deepen regional inequalities, with peripheral areas loosing further ground. This study explores exposure to artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and employment patterns in Europe. First, we provide a thorough mapping of European regions focusing on the structural factors—such as sectoral specialisation, R&D capacity, productivity and workforce skills—that may...	Dario Guarascio, Jelena Reljic, Roman Stöllinger
8	2022	Effects of technological change and automation on industry structure and (wage-)inequality: insights from a dynamic task-based model ↗ The paper directly engages with the theoretical axis by employing a dynamic task-based model to analyze how automation reshapes industry structure and wage inequality. It complements the project's focus on the micro-foundations of technology shocks and their distributional consequences, offering insights into the market dynamics that underpin shift-share instruments in the automation literature. Abstract The advent of artificial intelligence is changing the task allocation of workers and machines in firms’ production processes with potentially wide ranging effects on workers and firms. We develop an agent-based simulation framework to investigate the consequences of different types of automation for industry output, the wage distribution, the labor share, and industry dynamics. It is shown how the competitiveness of markets, in particular barriers to entry, changes the effects that automation has on various outcome variables, and to which extent heterogeneous workers with distinct general skill endowments and heterogeneous firms featuring distinct wage offer rules affect the...	Herbert Dawid, Michael Neugart
8	2023	Do Robots Increase Wealth Dispersion? ↗ This paper directly investigates the wealth distribution consequences of robot adoption, a core empirical application of the shift-share instrument design within the automation literature. It extends the standard Acemoglu & Restrepo framework by uncovering a novel portfolio rebalancing channel that amplifies inequality, providing significant context for the project's focus on labor market and distributional effects of technological shocks. Abstract We document significant negative effects of exposure to increased automation at work on household wealth accumulation. Beyond the income and savings channels, we uncover a novel mechanism contributing to the negative wealth effects of automation that arises through the endogenous optimal portfolio decisions of households. We show that households rebalance their financial wealth away from the stock market in response to increased human capital risk induced by pervasive automation, thereby attaining lower wealth levels and relative positions in the wealth distribution. Our evidence suggests that the portfolio channel amplifies the inequality-enhancing effects of increased automation...	Francisco Gomes, Thomas Jansson, Yigitcan Karabulut
8	2023	Imported carbon emissions: Evidence from French manufacturing companies ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) instrumental variable methodology using third-country supply shocks, which aligns perfectly with the project's focus on the 'foreign shift' variant of the design. It provides relevant empirical evidence on how local industry composition interacts with external supply shocks to identify causal effects, addressing core methodological themes such as instrument construction and exclusion restriction validity. Abstract This paper analyzes imported carbon emission at the firm level. To do so, we combine information on emissions, imports, imported emissions and energy prices for French manufacturing firms between 1997 and 2014. We document a significant increase of the carbon emissions embedded in imports of French manufacturing companies over the period 1997 to 2014 that is attributable mainly to a shift towards more carbon‐intensive products and countries. We then estimate the impact of imported emissions on domestic emissions and emission intensity using a shift‐share instrumental variable strategy based on third countries supply shocks. We do not find compelling evidence of an impact of carbon...	Damien Dussaux, Francesco Vona, Antoine Dechezleprêtre
8	2023	Generative AI and the Workforce: What Are the Risks? ↗ This paper directly addresses the project's theoretical axis by applying occupation-level task-exposure measures to generative AI, extending the lineage of LLM exposure indices like Eloundou et al. (2023). It provides empirical context relevant to the automation and AI-capability index components of the Bartik-style designs discussed in the project. The unprecedented and rapid diffusion of generative AI represents a major disruption for the labour market, bringing new opportunities and risks within the same transformation. Our paper addresses two significant questions: What are the occupations exposed to generative AI in Australia? What are the risks associated with the diffusion of generative AI within occupations?	Emmanuelle Walkowiak, Trent MacDonald
8	2024	The potential impact of AI innovations on US occupations ↗ This paper directly contributes to the project's theoretical axis by developing a novel AI-task-exposure measure using deep learning, extending the occupation-level exposure indices central to the task-based model framework. It provides empirical evidence on how AI affects both routine and non-routine tasks, offering relevant context for the automation and technology shock components of the research. An occupation is comprised of interconnected tasks, and it is these tasks, not occupations themselves, that are affected by Artificial Intelligence (AI). To evaluate how tasks may be impacted, previous approaches utilized manual annotations or coarse-grained matching. Leveraging recent advancements in machine learning, we replace coarse-grained matching with more precise deep learning approaches. Introducing the AI Impact measure, we employ Deep Learning Natural Language Processing to automatically identify AI patents that may impact various occupational tasks at scale. Our methodology relies on a comprehensive dataset of 17,879 task descriptions and quantifies AI's potential impact through...	Ali Akbar Septiandri, Marios Constantinides, Daniele Quercia
8	2024	Technological employment: Evidence from worldwide robot adoption ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation axis of the project by examining the labor market effects of worldwide robot adoption, a key topic in the Acemoglu and Restrepo literature. It provides relevant empirical evidence on whether robots increase or decrease employment, contributing to the debate on the net impact of technological shocks on labor markets. Technological advances can automate many jobs, therby reducing the reliance on some workers, yet they can also create jobs. Determining the overall impact is not immediately evident and necessitaes empirical research. In this paper, we use data on worldwide robot adoption from 1993 to 2021 to explore whether robots increase labour productivity and employment in the 74 sampled economies. We find that robots lead to higher productivity and employment on a global scale. To gain more insights into the results, we also examine the effects both in the long run and the short run using labour market data from developed countries. Using error correction model, the findings show that robot adoption...	Shahab Sharfaei, Jan Bittner
8	2020	Health spending in Italy: The impact of immigrants ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share instrumental variable design to the immigration literature, a core empirical application of the project. It utilizes the Bartik instrument to isolate supply-side immigration shocks while addressing identification concerns, aligning closely with the methodological and empirical axes regarding immigration effects. The welfare impact of immigration is a hot topic especially for countries at the external borders of the European Union. This paper studies how immigrants affect public health expenditure across Italian regions during the period 2003-2015. Identification strategy is based on shift{share instruments, which are also robust to pull factors that might attract immigrants in Italy and to internal migration of natives. We find that a 1 percentage point increase in immigrants over total population leads to a decrease in public health expenditure per capita by about 3.9% (i.e. around 70 euro per capita). This evidence is confirmed when focusing on needy immigrants from low income countries with less...	Giulia Bettin, Agnese Sacchi
8	2022	Effect of Industrial Robots on Employment in China: An Industry Level Analysis ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation axis by analyzing the labor market effects of industrial robots in China, a key empirical application of the shift-share design. It employs the task-based model framework central to the project and investigates the differential impacts of robot adoption on various industry employment levels. China has been the world's largest market for industrial robots since 2013. Industrial robots improve accuracy, safety, and efficiency in industrial production but have a substantial impact on the labor market. This investigation uses the task-based model to explore the relationship between industrial robots and employment across industries. This study uses industrial robot data from the International Federation of Robotics and employment data from the China Statistical Yearbook from 2010 to 2019 to examine robot applications' influencing mechanisms on labor demand in different industries in China. The results show a significant positive correlation between robots' exposure and labor demand...	Yantong Zhao, Rusmawati Said, Normaz Wana Ismail, et al.
8	2021	Who with whom? Untangling the effect of high-skilled immigration on innovation* ↗ This paper closely relates to the immigration application axis by employing an instrumental variable approach to estimate the causal effects of immigration, specifically high-skilled inflows, on economic outcomes like innovation. It aligns with the project's interest in shift-share-like designs for isolating supply-side immigration shocks from local demand conditions, although it focuses on innovation rather than the traditional labor market outcomes emphasized in the core trade and automation literature. Abstract I analyze how high-skilled immigration affects native, immigrant and collaborative innovation, using an IV approach that exploits exogenous variation in push factors of migration across origin regions and over time. The overall impact of high-skilled immigration on innovation is positive and substantial. High-skilled immigrants from developed regions of the world and with a PhD contribute by innovating themselves, enhancing native-immigrant and international collaborations, and spurring native innovation. I show that the latter effect is likely driven by the access to immigrants’ origin specific knowledge. In contrast, while there is no evidence for a significant direct...	Christoph Wigger
8	2024	Industrial robots, supply chain spillover effect and firm employment: Evidence from China ↗ This paper directly addresses the empirical applications axis regarding robot adoption and its labor market effects, specifically extending the literature by examining supply chain spillovers in China. It provides relevant micro-evidence on how automation shocks propagate through customer-supplier networks, offering a nuanced perspective on the employment and task composition effects central to the project's theoretical and empirical focus. This paper constructs the supplier-customer matching data for Chinese listed firms to examine the impact of the customer robot adoption on the supplier employment from the perspective of supply chain. On the one hand, customer robot adoption generates negative capital spillover effect, decreasing the employment of suppliers through financial distress contagion and relative bargaining power reduction; on the other hand, customer robot adoption generates positive information spillover effect, enhancing the employment of high-skilled labor of suppliers through market signaling and information sharing. The empirical results show that the capital spillover effect of customer robot adoption is...	Qilin Mao, Chongyang Guo
8	2020	US agricultural exports and labor market adjustments ↗ This paper applies the shift-share (Bartik) instrument methodology to analyze the labor market effects of export shocks, directly mirroring the structural design discussed in the project's trade and automation axes. It provides relevant empirical context by examining how initial industry specialization interacts with national export trends to influence local employment and individual labor supply decisions. Abstract This study empirically investigates the impact of US agricultural exports on farm and nonfarm employment and tests how individuals adjust to agricultural export shocks. Based on the data from 1991 to 2017 and a Bartik‐style instrument that exploits cross‐regional variation in agricultural export exposure stemming from initial differences in agricultural specialization and temporal variation in predicted US exports from exogenous tariff reductions, we find that a 1% increase in agricultural exports increases farm employment by 0.302% and has no statistically significant impact on nonfarm employment. The individual‐level analysis shows that, in response to positive agricultural...	Xi He
8	2019	The labor market effects of the China Syndrome: Evidence from South Korean manufacturing ↗ This paper is closely related as it directly applies the shift-share instrumental variable design to evaluate the labor market impacts of the China trade shock in South Korea. It provides important empirical evidence on the distinct channels of import competition versus supply chain integration, extending the core trade shock literature central to the project. Abstract We evaluate the direct impact of China trade shock on the Korean labour market following the approach of Acemoglu, Autor, Dorn, Hanson, and Price ( Journal of Labor Economics , 2016, 34, S1). Using firm‐ and industry‐level data for the period 1993–2013, our direct estimates imply that the net employment effect of the China shock in the manufacturing sector is the creation of 0.52 million jobs. The positive impact is mostly driven by China's rising demand for intermediate inputs and capital goods from Korea to support its export expansion to the global economy. The import‐competition channel plays a negligible role in manufacturing employment because it creates temporary jobs that...	Jaerim Choi, Mingzhi Xu
8	2008	Reconciling National and Regional Estimates of the Effect of Immigration on U.S. Labor Markets: The Confounding Effects of Native Male Incarceration Trends ↗ This paper directly engages with the immigration application of shift-share designs by addressing a critical confounding factor in estimating native labor market effects. It provides methodological insights relevant to the identification challenges and validity of empirical strategies in this specific domain. In this paper, we reconcile the disparity between regional and national level estimates of the effect of immigration on native earnings. The reconciliation derives from the fact that existing national level studies fail to adequately control for changes in other determinants of the wage structure that correspond closely with the skill distribution of immigrant shocks. We focus specifically on the effect of accounting for incarceration trends. Over the past thirty years, an increasing proportion of low skilled native workers have served time in prison, a development that has arguably harmed their employment prospects. We show that the fraction of a given education-experience group that is...	Steven Raphael, Lucas Ronconi
8	2024	Robots as guardians: Industrial automation and workplace safety in China ↗ This paper directly contributes to the automation/robots empirical applications axis by investigating a new outcome dimension—workplace safety—using industrial robot exposure in China. It employs an instrumental variable strategy to identify the causal impact of automation, aligning with the methodological focus on shift-share or exposure-based instruments and the theoretical context of technology shocks affecting task content. Industrial robots can improve workplace safety by performing hazardous tasks on behalf of workers. This paper examines the impact of industrial robots on workplace safety in China. We find that a one-standard-deviation increase in robot exposure reduces annual workplace accidents and fatalities by 0.100 and 0.0133 cases per thousand population, compared to sample averages of 0.122 accidents and 0.0351 fatalities. These findings are robust to an instrumental variable strategy and various robustness checks. Our analysis of injuries in household surveys and Baidu search activities reinforces these results. Using an accounting framework, we show that the safety improvement is not driven by the...	Wei Luo, Lixin Tang, Yaxin Yang, et al.
8	2019	Markets for jobs and their task overlap ↗ This paper provides crucial theoretical and empirical support for the task-based framework that underpins shift-share instruments in automation literature, specifically linking job task content to labor market dynamics. It reinforces the mechanism by which technology shocks affect different worker groups, validating the use of task-composition-based exposure indices in Bartik designs. We show that tightness in markets for jobs for which an unemployed job seeker fully qualifies in terms of her task competencies is predictive of her unemployment duration. This suggests that the labour market is organized along jobs and their task content. We also find that unemployed job seekers do not compete in markets where they possess only part of the required task competencies, suggesting that task overlap across jobs is unimportant for worker mobility between job markets. This implies that adverse task-biased shocks are likely to have pronounced distributional consequences across workers with different task competencies. To illustrate this, we quantify the impact of technological...	Maarten Goos, Emilie Rademakers, Anna Salomons, et al.
8	2023	Generative AI and Firm Values ↗ This paper applies the task-based framework central to the project by constructing a workforce exposure measure to Generative AI, analogous to the automation and AI-capability indices discussed in the theoretical axis. It empirically investigates the firm-level consequences of this technology shock, contributing to the literature on how differential exposure to technological shifts affects economic outcomes. How do recent advances in Generative AI affect firm value? We construct the first measure of firms' workforce exposures to Generative AI and show that an "Artificial-Minus-Human" (AMH) portfolio earned 5% in the two weeks following the ChatGPT release. The labor-exposure effect is more pronounced for firms with greater data assets and is distinct from the effect of firms' product exposures to AI. We assess whether exposed workforces are substituted or complemented by Generative AI based on whether their exposed tasks are core or supplemental. Examining firms’ labor demand and profitability following the ChatGPT release supports a labor-technology substitution channel.	Andrea L. Eisfeldt, Gregor Schubert, Miao Ben Zhang
8	2015	The Price of Polarization: Estimating Task Prices Under Routine-Biased Technical Change ↗ This paper is closely related as it empirically validates the task-based model underlying occupation-level shift-share instruments by estimating the polarization of task prices under routine-biased technical change. It directly addresses the theoretical foundation for constructing occupation-level exposure indices used in the automation and labor market polarization literature. This paper proposes a new approach to estimate task prices per efficiency unit of skill in the Roy model. I show how the sorting of workers into tasks and their associated wage growth can be used to identify changes in task prices under relatively weak assumptions. The estimation exploits the fact that the returns to observable talents will change differentially over time depending on the changes in prices of those tasks that they predict workers to sort into. In the generalized Roy model, also the average non‐pecuniary amenities in each task are identified. I apply this approach to the literature on routine‐biased technical change, a key prediction of which is that task prices should...	Michael J. Böhm
8	2024	The Contribution of Immigration to Local Labor Market Adjustment ↗ This paper directly engages with the immigration application of shift-share designs, specifically critiquing the validity of the enclave instrument used in studies like Card (2001). It addresses core methodological concerns regarding exclusion restrictions and local demand shocks, which are central to the shifts-based identification framework discussed in the project. The US suffers from persistent regional disparities in employment rates. In principle, these disparities should be eliminated by population mobility. Can immigration fulfill this role? Remarkably, since 1960, I show that new migrants from abroad account for 40% of the average population response to these disparities - which vastly exceeds their historic share of gross migratory flows. But despite this, immigration does not significantly accelerate local population adjustment (or reduce local employment rate disparities), as it crowds out the contribution from internal mobility. Indeed, this crowd-out can help account for the concurrent decline in internal mobility. Finally, I attribute the...	Michael Amior
8	2024	The Simple Macroeconomics of AI ↗ This paper is closely related as it utilizes a task-based model to analyze the macroeconomic effects of AI, directly connecting to the theoretical axis regarding automation and task exposure measures. It provides critical context on the distinction between micro-level productivity gains and aggregate outcomes, which is essential for understanding the general-equilibrium implications of shift-share type technologies. This paper evaluates claims about large macroeconomic implications of new advances in AI. It starts from a task-based model of AI’s effects, working through automation and task complementarities. So long as AI’s microeconomic effects are driven by cost savings/productivity improvements at the task level, its macroeconomic consequences will be given by a version of Hulten’s theorem: GDP and aggregate productivity gains can be estimated by what fraction of tasks are impacted and average task-level cost savings. Using existing estimates on exposure to AI and productivity improvements at the task level, these macroeconomic effects appear nontrivial but modest—no more than a 0.66% increase in...	Daron Acemoğlu
8	2024	Pain or anxiety? The health consequences of rising robot adoption in China ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation/robots axis of the project by examining the health consequences of industrial robot adoption, aligning with the core interest in Acemoglu & Restrepo’s work. It extends the empirical applications of shift-share designs to novel health outcomes in the Chinese context, offering relevant evidence on the distributional effects of automation shocks. The rising adoption of industrial robots is radically changing the role of workers in the production process. Robots can be used for some of the more physically demanding and dangerous production work, thus reducing the possibility of worker injury. On the other hand, robots may replace workers, potentially increasing worker anxiety about their job safety. In this paper, we investigate how individual physical health and mental health outcomes vary with local exposure to robots for manufacturing workers in China. We find a link between robot exposure and better physical health of workers, particularly for younger workers and those with less education. However, we also find that robot...	Qiren Liu, Sen Luo, Robert Seamans
8	2018	The Great Opening up and the Roadmap for the Future: The Story of China's International Trade ↗ This paper serves as a comprehensive survey of the China shock literature, directly addressing the project's core empirical domain regarding trade shocks and their local labor market effects. It synthesizes key mechanisms and findings on how China's export growth impacted foreign countries, aligning closely with the theoretical and empirical frameworks discussed in the project. Abstract The astonishing surge in China's international trade is the result of comprehensive economic reforms in the 1980s and 1990s. Trade was further bolstered by China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. We examine several aspects of China's international trade that might help to explain its surprisingly fast growth and its ever‐growing role in the global economy. A large number of studies have analyzed how trade liberalization, the WTO accession in particular, has profoundly changed the Chinese economy. We survey notable contributions to this literature that analyze the effects of trade liberalization on Chinese firms, individuals and households. Meanwhile...	Yan Du, Yi Lu
8	2023	Who is AI Replacing? The Impact of ChatGPT on Online Freelancing Platforms ↗ This paper directly addresses the project's theoretical axis by empirically examining the impact of Large Language Model capabilities on labor demand, serving as a contemporary extension of task-based automation exposure studies. It provides relevant evidence on how AI substitutes for specific task content, complementing the discussion on LLM task-exposure measures and the broader automation literature. This paper studies the impact of Generative AI technologies on the demand for online freelancers using a large dataset from a leading global freelancing platform. We identify the types of jobs that are more affected by Generative AI and quantify the magnitude of the heterogeneous impact. Our findings indicate a 21% decrease in the number of job posts for automation-prone jobs related to writing and coding, compared to jobs requiring manual-intensive skills, within eight months after the introduction of Chat-GPT. We show that the reduction in the number of job posts increases competition among freelancers while the remaining automation-prone jobs are of greater complexity and offer higher...	Ozge Demirci, Jonas Hannane, Xinrong Zhu
8	2014	Cheap Imports and the Loss of US Manufacturing Jobs ↗ This paper is closely related as it empirically investigates the core 'China shock' trade shock application central to the project's scope. It utilizes industry-level import competition measures to analyze local labor market effects, directly aligning with the trade shocks axis and the distinction between local partial-equilibrium impacts on specific worker groups. Abstract This study examines the role of international trade and specifically imports from low‐wage countries, in determining patterns of job loss in U.S. manufacturing industries between 1992 and 2007. Motivated by intuitions from factor‐proportions‐inspired work on offshoring and heterogeneous firms in trade, we build industry‐level measures of import competition. Combining worker data from the Longitudinal Employer‐Household Dynamics data set, detailed establishment information from the Census of Manufactures and transaction‐level trade data, we find that rising import competition from China and other developing economies increases the likelihood of job loss among manufacturing workers...	Thomas Kemeny, David L. Rigby, Abigail M. Cooke
8	2017	Slicing the Pie: Quantifying the Aggregate and Distributional Effects of Trade ↗ This paper closely relates to the project by providing a structural general-equilibrium framework to bridge the gap between local partial-equilibrium estimates from China-shock studies and aggregate welfare effects. It utilizes the core empirical context of the China shock literature while addressing the unifying concern of distinguishing between local and aggregate impacts, a key theoretical axis of the research project. We develop a multi-sector gravity model with heterogeneous workers to quantify the aggregate and group-level welfare effects of trade. The model generalizes the specific-factors intuition to a setting with labor reallocation, leads to a parsimonious formula for the group-level welfare effects from trade, and nests the aggregate results in Arkolakis et al. (2012). We estimate the model using the structural relationship between China-shock driven changes in manufacturing employment and average earnings across US groups defined as commuting zones. We find that the China shock increases average welfare but some groups experience losses as high as four times the average gain. However, adjusting...	Simon Galle, Andrés Rodrı́guez-Clare, Moises Yi
8	2019	Spatial Linkages, Global Shocks, and Local Labor Markets: Theory and Evidence ↗ This paper directly engages with the shift-share methodology by analyzing how local labor market exposure to global shocks is mediated by spatial linkages in a general equilibrium framework. It addresses the core project concern regarding the gap between local partial-equilibrium effects identified by shift-share instruments and aggregate general-equilibrium outcomes, offering a structural bridge via its Model-implied Optimal IV approach. How do shocks to economic fundamentals in the world economy affect local labor markets? In a framework with a flexible structure of spatial linkages, we characterize the model-consistent shock exposure of a local market as the exogenous shift in its production revenues and consumption costs. In general equilibrium, labor outcomes in any market respond directly to the market’s own shock exposure, and indirectly to other markets shocks exposures. We show how spatial linkages control the size and the heterogeneity of these indirect effects. We then develop a new estimation methodology - the Model-implied Optimal IV (MOIV) - that exploits quasi-experimental variation in economic shocks to...	Rodrigo Adão, Costas Arkolakis, Federico Esposito
8	2025	Automation and the rise of superstar firms ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation/robots empirical application axis by analyzing the link between automation technology and firm-level outcomes like concentration and markups. It employs an instrumental variable approach to identify causal effects, aligning with the methodological focus on IV strategies, though it operates within a general equilibrium framework rather than the standard local shift-share context. Using an instrumental variable approach, we document evidence that the rise in automation technology contributed to the rise of superstar ﬁrms. We explain this empirical link in a general equilibrium framework with heterogeneous ﬁrms and variable markups. Firms can operate a labor-only technology or, by paying a per-period ﬁxed cost, an automation technology that uses both workers and robots. Given the ﬁxed cost, larger and more productive ﬁrms are more likely to automate. Automation boosts labor productivity, enabling those large automating ﬁrms to expand further, and thus raising industry concentration. Our calibrated model can replicate the highly skewed automation usage toward superstar...	Hamid Firooz, Zheng Liu, Yajie Wang
8	2023	Innovation and the labor market: theory, evidence, and challenges ↗ This paper is closely related as it addresses the automation/robots axis and the task-based theoretical framework central to the project. It specifically utilizes patent-based exposure measures, aligning with the project's mention of patent-text-overlap exposure for analyzing technology shocks on the labor market. Abstract This paper deals with the complex relationship between innovation and the labor market, analyzing the impact of new technological advancements on overall employment, skills, and wages. After a critical review of the extant literature and the available empirical studies, novel evidence is presented on the distribution of labor-saving automation [namely robotics and artificial intelligence (AI)], based on natural language processing of US patents. This mapping shows that both upstream high-tech providers and downstream users of new technologies—such as Boeing and Amazon—lead the underlying innovative effort.	Nicoletta Corrocher, Daniele Moschella, Jacopo Staccioli, et al.
8	2024	“Machine replacement” or “job creation”: How does artificial intelligence impact employment patterns in China's manufacturing industry? ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis of the project by applying the task-based model to analyze how AI impacts employment patterns through substitution and creation effects. It provides relevant empirical evidence on the labor market consequences of technological automation, aligning with the project's focus on the effects of AI and robot adoption on wages, employment, and skill structures. Artificial intelligence (AI), as an important engine for promoting high-quality economic development, should not be overlooked in terms of its impact on the employment of the labor force while promoting the digital and intelligent transformation of industries. In the face of the complex international environment and non-systemic shocks, it is of great significance to explore whether it is "machine replacement" or "job creation" in the process of the integration of AI and industry, as well as the impact of technological progress on the employment pattern of the labor force, in order to promote the economic development, respond to and solve the employment problem. It is of great significance...	Qing-Qing Huo, Jing Ruan, Yan Cui
8	2021	Automation and Manufacturing Performance in a Developing Country ↗ This paper directly addresses the empirical applications axis by providing key evidence on the labor market effects of robot adoption in a developing country, a core topic within the automation literature. It offers relevant insights into the mechanisms and distributional consequences of automation, extending the understanding of shift-share style findings to new contexts. This paper provides novel evidence on \n the economic impact of industrial automation in a large \n developing economy. It combines labor force survey and \n manufacturing plant-level data from Indonesia over 2008–15, \n when the country experienced a rapid increase in imports of \n robots. The findings show a positive impact of robots on \n various measures of plants’ performance and integration into \n global value chains. In contrast to existing evidence on \n advanced and emerging economies, these plant-level impacts \n result in an increase in manufacturing and services \n employment at the local level. Such employment effects are \n consistent with evidence of positive employment...	Massimiliano Calì, Giorgio Presidente
8	2016	Chinese import competition and the provisions for external debt financing in the US ↗ [Title only] This paper directly applies the Chinese import shock shift-share instrumental variable design to study financial constraints, specifically external debt financing, extending the standard labor market applications. It addresses firm-level dynamics and capital structure responses to trade exposure, which is a key extension within the trade shock literature's empirical agenda. No abstract available.	Mohammad M. Rahaman
8	2018	Why Does Import Competition Favor Republicans? Localized Trade Shocks, Voting Behavior, and Scapegoating in the U.S. ↗ [Title only] This paper likely employs a shift-share instrument based on local industry composition and trade exposure to analyze the political polarization effects of the 'China shock,' a core application within the specified trade shocks domain. It directly addresses the researcher's interest in how localized import competition influences voting behavior and political outcomes, aligning with the broader literature on trade shock consequences. No abstract available.	Andrea Cerrato, Federico Maria Ferrara, Francesco Ruggieri
8	2023	The impact of automation on labour market outcomes in emerging countries ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share instrumental variable design to the automation domain, specifically estimating the labor market effects of robot adoption in emerging economies using a foreign-shift instrument. It aligns closely with the project's focus on automation/robots and the methodological distinction between local and foreign shift components, while also addressing the broader context of global value chains and labor share dynamics. Abstract The labour market effects of automation have gained significant attention from scholars and policymakers. Concerns about negative effects are important in emerging countries, where a rapid acceleration of robot adoption and an increasing involvement in global value chains have been observed in recent years, with the subsequent increase in exposure to foreign competition. This paper estimates the effect of local and foreign robots on labour market outcomes and labour shares using a panel dataset composed of 16 sectors and ten emerging countries from 2008 to 2014. The endogeneity of robots' adoption is addressed with an instrumental variables approach and using a shift‐share index of...	Luis R. Díaz Pavez, Inmaculada Martínez‐Zarzoso
8	2020	Low‐skill jobs and routine tasks specialization: New insights from Italian provinces ↗ This paper applies the Autor and Dorn (2013) task-based framework, a foundational element of the project's theoretical axis, to analyze labor market polarization in Italy. By examining how routine task specialization drives changes in low-skill employment, it provides direct empirical evidence related to the occupational exposure indices and automation literature central to the researcher's focus. This paper analyzes the relation between specialization in routine tasks and the growth of low-skill jobs in Italian provinces. We use data of the Labour Force Survey (RCFL-ISTAT) integrated with information about the Italian provinces’ specialization in routine tasks derived from the Occupational Information Network (O*NET). Following the empirical strategy proposed by Autor and Dorn (2013), we find the following results. First, in the period between 2004 and 2017, the routine-tasks specialization leads to a significant increase in the growth of low-skill/low-wage occupations at province level. Second, if we focus on university-educated workers, the impact of provinces’ specialization in...	Irene Brunetti, Valerio Intraligi, Andrea Ricci, et al.
8	2020	Collateral Damage? Labour Market Effects of Competing with China—at Home and Abroad ↗ This paper directly addresses the trade shock domain of the project by analyzing the labor market effects of competition from China, a central application of shift-share designs. It specifically investigates the indirect 'market-stealing' channel, which relates to the methodological discussion on foreign shifts and exclusion restriction violations in the China shock literature. The increasing range and quality of China's exports is a major development internationally with potentially far‐reaching effects. In this paper, on top of the direct labour market effects of imports from China studied in previous research, we also measure the indirect effects stemming from increased export competition in third markets. Our findings, based on matched employer–employee data of Portugal covering the period 1991–2008, indicate that workers’ earnings and employment are significantly negatively affected by China's competition, but only through the indirect ‘market‐stealing’ channel. In contrast to earlier evidence, the direct effects of Chinese imports are mostly non‐significant...	Sónia Cabral, Pedro S. Martins, João Pereira dos Santos, et al.
8	2022	China's impact on regional employment: Propagation through input–output linkages and co‐location patterns ↗ This paper applies the shift-share Bartik design to analyze the regional labor market effects of the China shock in Japan, directly addressing the trade shock empirical application axis. It extends the standard methodology by incorporating input-output linkages and co-location patterns to better capture shock propagation, offering relevant insights into the identification and measurement of local labor market impacts. Abstract How do imports from China affect local labour markets in Japan? We examine this question using commuting zones as regional units and analysing shock propagation through supply chains and co‐location patterns. Applying the method proposed by Autor et al. (American Economic Review, 103, 2121, 2013) and Acemoglu, Autor et al. (Journal of Labor Economics, 34, S141, 2016), we examine the impact of import shocks on regional manufacturing employment using input–output tables which allows us to investigate the propagation of shocks to both upstream and downstream industries and to relate the regional impact to industry co‐location patterns. We find that the negative direct effect on local...	Shuhei Kainuma, Yukiko Saito
8	2019	Chinese competition and product variety of Indian firms ↗ This paper directly addresses the trade shock application of the shift-share design by examining the local labor market and firm-level effects of Chinese import competition in India. It employs a methodology closely aligned with the 'China shock' literature, utilizing an exogenous shock to instrument for import penetration, thereby fitting the project's empirical applications axis. Using detailed firm-product-year data across manufacturing industries in India, and exploiting the exogenous nature of China's entry into the WTO in 2001, we investigate the link between the impact of import penetration from China on the product variety of Indian manufacturing firms. We find: (i) robust and significant effect of product drop, with the effect coming only from competitive pressure in the domestic market; (ii) evidence of product drop or 'creative destruction' is robust only for the lower-half of the size distribution; (iii) firms drop their peripheral/marginal products and concentrate on the core ones; and (iv) our result is most strong for firms producing intermediate goods...	Pavel Chakraborty, Michael Henry
8	2020	The Multiplier Effect of Education Expenditure ↗ This paper closely relates to the project by applying a shift-share-like identification strategy using national program growth rates (Pell Grants) weighted by local exposure to estimate fiscal multipliers, paralleling the methodology in Nakamura & Steinsson (2014). It provides valuable comparative context on the magnitude and heterogeneity of fiscal multipliers across different spending categories (education vs. military), which is central to the project's empirical applications axis. This paper examines the short-run effects of federal education expenditures on local income. We exploit city-level variation in exposure to national changes in the $30-billion Federal Pell Grant Program, which is the largest program to help low-income students attend college in the U.S., to calculate fiscal multipliers of education expenditures. An increase in Pell grants by 1 percent of a city's income raises local income by 2.4 percent over the next two years. This multiplier effect is larger than estimates for military spending (1.5 on average). Multipliers are higher when grants are awarded to students at non-profit colleges, as for-profit colleges absorb most of the grant increases...	Maarten de Ridder, Simona M. Hannon, Damjan Pfajfar
8	2023	Generative AI, generating precariousness for workers? ↗ [Title only] This paper likely relates to the theoretical axis concerning AI capability indices and task-exposure measures, specifically examining the distributional consequences of generative AI on labor markets. It probably connects to the broader discussion on automation and worker precariousness, fitting within the scope of shift-share designs used to measure technology shock exposure. No abstract available.	Aida Ponce del Castillo
8	2021	Technology, Vintage-Specific Human Capital, and Labor Displacement: Evidence from Linking Patents with Occupations ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis of the project by developing a patent-text-overlap exposure measure, which is explicitly listed as a key occupation-level shift-share analogue. It provides empirical evidence on labor displacement due to technological change, aligning with the project's focus on automation, task-based models, and the distributional effects of innovation shocks. We construct new technology indicators using textual analysis of patent documents and occupation task descriptions that span of two centuries (1850–2010). At the industry level, improvements in technology are associated with higher labor productivity but a decline in the labor share. Exploiting variation in the extent certain technologies are related to specific occupations, we show that technological innovation has been largely associated with worse labor market outcomes— wages and employment—for incumbent workers in related occupations using a combination of public-use and confidential administrative data. Panel data on individual worker earnings reveal that less educated, older, and more...	Leonid Kogan, Dimitris Papanikolaou, Lawrence Schmidt, et al.
8	2023	Hukou Matters: The heterogeneous local labor market effects of export expansions in China ↗ This paper is closely related as it examines local labor market effects of trade shocks in China, aligning with the China shock literature central to the project's empirical applications axis. It utilizes an export-based variation that parallels the shift-share instrumental variable design by linking national or sectoral trade expansions to local exposure, thereby addressing the core methodological interest in how external shocks propagate to local labor markets. This paper studies the effects of export expansions between 2000 and 2015 on China's local labor markets, focusing on the heterogeneous effects for people with different Hukou statuses. We find that rising local exports increased manufacturing and service-sector employment shares but decreased agricultural employment share for non-local-urban-Hukou residents, including local-rural-Hukou people and cross-prefecture migrants. On the other hand, trade expansions decreased the likelihood of employment and service-sector employment for local-urban-Hukou people. We provide evidence on the substitution and wealth effects for the “crowding-out” of local-urban-Hukou people out of employment.	Shuaizhang Feng, Jingliang Lu, Leilei Shen
8	2023	Losing trust when pursuing development: How automation hindered political trust in China? ↗ This paper closely aligns with the project's automation axis by examining the political consequences of robot adoption, extending the scope beyond labor market outcomes to include political trust. It utilizes robot exposure metrics similar to those found in the Acemoglu & Restrepo literature, fitting within the empirical applications and theoretical mechanisms of the shift-share design framework. The side effects of automation on the economy have been discussed frequently, but little is known regarding its political consequences. This paper examines the causal effect that automation induces on political costs for the local government. By combining the national individual-level panel data of political trust with the prefecture-level robot exposure rate in China, we find that the development of automation would reduce individuals’ political trust in the Chinese local government. Furthermore, we explore the channels through which the automation process could affect political trust, namely the risk of unemployment, intensified pessimism about local government, higher downside risk, and...	Wenyi Lu, Shilong Zhuang, Siyuan Fan
8	2013	Immigration and careers of European workers: effects and the role of policies ↗ This paper directly addresses the immigration application of shift-share IV designs by employing an enclave-based instrument to isolate supply-side immigration shocks from local demand. It provides empirical evidence on how native workers respond to these exogenous inflows, contributing to the literature on labor market effects of immigration. Abstract In this paper we analyze the response of career, employment and wage of native Europeans to immigration. We then ask how individual country’s policies affect these responses. We use data on 11 EU countries, over the period 1995–2001. We also use the 1991 distribution of immigrants by nationality across European labor markets to construct a version of the enclave-based instrument to proxy for the flow of immigrants, that is exogenous to local demand shocks. We find that native Europeans are more likely to upgrade to more skilled and better paid occupations, when a larger number of immigrants enter their labor market. We find no evidence of an increased likelihood of non-employment...	Cristina Cattaneo, Carlo V. Fiorio, Giovanni Peri
8	2024	Are robots crowding out migrant workers? Evidence from urban China ↗ This paper directly engages with the automation axis of the project by examining the labor market effects of industrial robot adoption in China, a key application area alongside the China shock literature. It utilizes the core conceptual framework of task-based models to analyze how technological displacement and reinstatement effects differentially impact migrant workers, providing empirical evidence relevant to the study of automation's distributional consequences. The heated debate on automation versus labor pulls at the heartstrings of many in both academia and industry, as automation can trigger dramatic adjustments in the urban labor market. Yet, little is known about how migrant workers respond to such technological advances. To contribute to this debate, this paper empirically investigates the effects of automation (proxied by the exposure degree of industrial robots) on the settlement intention of migrant workers in urban China. Employing data from the China Migrants Dynamic Survey (CMDS) 2014–2017, our results reveal that cities with greater exposure to industrial robots are more likely to attract migrant workers to settle. Yet, the promotion...	Jiantao Zhou, Eddie C.M. Hui, Huiwen Peng
8	2024	Just reallocated? Robots displacement, and job quality ↗ This paper directly contributes to the automation/robots empirical application axis by estimating the labor market effects of industrial robot adoption on job quality and worker displacement. It extends the core literature by analyzing the consequences for displaced workers' earnings and employment stability, which is a key outcome of interest in shift-share designs focusing on automation shocks. Abstract Concerns over widespread technological unemployment are often dismissed with the argument that human labour is not destroyed by automation but rather reallocated to other tasks, occupations or sectors. When focusing on pure employment levels, the idea that workers are not permanently excluded but ‘just’ reallocated might be reassuring. However, while attention has been devoted to the impact of automation on employment levels, little has been said about the quality of new job matches for displaced workers. Using an administrative longitudinal panel covering a large sample of Spanish workers from 2001 to 2017, we investigate the short‐ and medium‐term re‐employment prospects of...	Liliana Cuccu, Vicente Royuela
8	2017	Does Import Competition Induce R&D Reallocation? Evidence from the U.S. ↗ This paper directly addresses the China shock literature by analyzing firm-level responses to import competition, a central empirical application of the shift-share design. It provides crucial evidence on the mechanisms through which trade shocks affect innovation and resource reallocation, which is key to understanding the partial-equilibrium effects estimated by such instruments. We analyze the impact of rising import competition from China on U.S. innovative activities. Using Compustat data, we find that import competition induces R&D expenditures to be reallocated towards more productive and more profitable firms within each industry. Such reallocation effect has the potential to offset the average drop in firm-level R&D identified in the previous literature. Indeed, our quantitative analysis shows no adverse impact of import competition on aggregate R&D expenditures. Taking the analysis beyond manufacturing, we find that import competition has led to reallocation of researchers towards booming service industries, including business and repairs, personal services...	Rui Xu, Kaiji Gong, RXu@imf.org, et al.
8	2024	Opposing Firm-Level Responses to the China Shock: Output Competition versus Input Supply ↗ This paper directly addresses the empirical applications axis by analyzing firm-level responses to the China shock, a core topic in the trade shock literature. It extends the standard shift-share framework by distinguishing between output competition and input supply channels, offering nuanced insights into how import exposure affects different firm characteristics. We decompose the “China shock” into two components that induce different adjustments for firms exposed to Chinese exports: an output shock affecting firms selling goods that compete with similar imported Chinese goods, and an input supply shock affecting firms using inputs similar to the imported Chinese goods. Combining French accounting, customs, and patent information at the firm level, we show that the output shock is detrimental to firms’ sales, employment, and innovation. Moreover, this negative impact is concentrated in low-productivity firms. On the other hand, the impact of the input supply shock is reversed. (JEL D22, D24, F14, J23, L25, O31, O34)	Philippe Aghion, Antonin Bergeaud, Matthieu Lequien, et al.
8	2021	Local Economic and Political Effects of Trade Deals: Evidence from NAFTA ↗ This paper is closely related as it applies the shift-share methodology to analyze the political polarization effects of a major trade shock, a key empirical application within the China shock and trade literature. It extends the core research agenda by linking local labor market exposure to shifts in voter behavior and party affiliation. Why have white, less-educated voters left the Democratic Party? We highlight the role of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In event-study analysis, we demonstrate that counties whose 1990 employment depended on industries vulnerable to NAFTA suffered large and persistent employment losses after its implementation. Voters in these counties (and protectionist voters regardless of geography) turned away from the party of President Clinton, who promoted the agreement. This shift is larger for whites (especially men and those without a college degree) and social conservatives, suggesting that racial identity and social-issue positions mediate reactions to economic policies...	Jiwon Choi, Ilyana Kuziemko, Ebonya Washington, et al.
8	2022	Immigrant labor and the institutionalization of the U.S.‐born elderly ↗ This paper applies the Bartik shift-share IV design to estimate the causal effect of immigration on elderly institutionalization, directly aligning with the project's focus on immigration and shift-share methodologies. It provides empirical evidence on how immigration-induced supply shocks in low-skilled labor markets affect local service costs and outcomes for the U.S.-born elderly, extending the application of the technique beyond traditional labor market wages. Abstract The U.S. population is aging. We examine whether immigration causally affects the likelihood that the U.S.‐born elderly live in institutional settings. Using a shift‐share instrument to identify exogenous variation in immigration, we find that a 10 percentage point increase in the less‐educated foreign‐born labor force share in a local area reduces institutionalization among the elderly by 1.5 and 3.8 percentage points for those aged 65+ and 80+, a 26%–29% effect relative to the mean. The estimates imply that a typical U.S.‐born individual over age 65 in the year 2000 was 0.5 percentage points (10%) less likely to be living in an institution than would have been the case if...	Kristin F. Butcher, Kelsey Moran, Tara Watson
8	2016	Adjusting to Globalization - Evidence from Worker-Establishment Matches in Germany This paper directly addresses the trade shock application of shift-share designs by analyzing the labor market effects of import penetration on worker earnings and mobility. It provides valuable empirical evidence on the heterogeneity of adjustment mechanisms and long-term earnings trajectories, which are central themes in the China shock and trade exposure literature. This paper addresses the impact of rising international trade exposure on individual earnings profiles in heterogeneous worker-establishment matches. We exploit rich panel data on job biographies of manufacturing workers in Germany, and apply a high-dimensional fixed effects approach to analyze endogenous mobility between plants, industries, and regions in response to trade shocks. Rising import penetration reduces earnings within job spells, and it induces workers to leave the exposed industries. Intra-industry mobility to other firms or regions are far less common adjustments. This induced industry mobility mitigates the adverse impacts of import shocks in the workers' subsequent careers...	Wolfgang Dauth, Sebastian Findeisen, Jens Suedekum
8	2023	Stalled Racial Progress and Japanese Trade in the 1970s and 1980s ↗ This paper applies the shift-share instrumental variable design to analyze the local labor market effects of import competition, directly aligning with the 'China shock' literature axis. It extends the methodological scope by examining distributional impacts across racial groups, a relevant empirical context for understanding heterogeneous effects of trade shocks. Abstract We assess the impact of a rapid rise in Japanese import competition on the growth in racial earnings and employment gaps during the 1970s and 80s. Using commuting zone level variation in exposure, we find Japanese competition led to a decrease in manufacturing employment and labour force participation for blacks. This was driven by a shift in demand for skill in manufacturing. The difference in effects between the 10th percentile most and least exposed commuting zone was equivalent to 36–46% of the relative rise in black non-labour force participation, and 78–96% of the relative decline in black median male earnings.	Mary Kate Batistich, Timothy N. Bond
8	2025	The Criminogenic Consequence of Export Slowdown: Evidence from Millions of Court Judgement Documents in China ↗ This paper applies the shift-share instrumental variable design to estimate the local labor market effects of export slowdowns on crime and social outcomes, directly aligning with the project's focus on trade shocks. It extends the China shock literature by examining criminogenic consequences and psychological health impacts using a Bartik-style instrument based on local industry composition and national export trends. Abstract This paper highlights the criminogenic consequence of the remarkable slowdown in China’s exports in recent years. By applying textual analysis to millions of judgement documents from all levels of courts in China, we construct measures of crime rates that vary across cities over time. Our estimations, using a shift-share instrumental variable, reveal a higher increase in crime rates in cities that experience a more severe export slowdown. The effects are more pronounced in the manufacturing-specialising regions, where there is a higher concentration of young people, migrants and school dropouts. Negative export shocks also lead to reduced job opportunities, decreased labour...	Hong Ma, Yu Pan, Mingzhi Xu
8	2007	Differential Impacts of Immigrants on Native Black and White Workers ↗ [Title only] This paper falls squarely within the immigration empirical applications axis, specifically addressing the distributional effects of immigration on native workers, a key topic in the Card (2001) literature. While it may not focus exclusively on the methodological debates of shift-share IV identification, it utilizes related exposure measures to analyze labor market outcomes across skill and racial groups. No abstract available.	Paul M. Ong, Don Mar
8	2024	Trade and inequality in Europe and the US ↗ This paper is closely related as it provides empirical evidence on the China shock, a central application of the shift-share design in the trade literature. It discusses the differential labor market impacts and distributional consequences of import competition, which are key themes in the project's empirical and theoretical axes. Abstract Low-income countries’ share of global exports nearly tripled between 1990 and 2015, largely due to China’s emergence as an exporting powerhouse. Evidence from several European countries and the US shows that import competition from China differentially reduced employment and earnings for workers in more trade-exposed industries and regions. We show that manufacturing employment declined most dramatically in countries where import growth was not matched by a commensurate expansion of exports. We also provide new results for the UK which indicate that imports from China contributed to substantial declines in consumer prices alongside job losses in manufacturing. However, while the...	David Dorn, Peter Levell
8	2014	Workers Beneath the Floodgates: The Impact of Removing Trade Quotas for China on Danish Workers ↗ This paper provides empirical evidence on the labor market impacts of trade shocks, specifically leveraging the removal of WTO quotas for China, which aligns with the China shock literature central to the project. It offers valuable context on worker adjustment costs and heterogeneity in exposure to import competition, complementing the broader discussion on local labor market effects of trade. I analyze the impact of a low-wage trade shock on manufacturing workers in a high-wage country, Denmark, and their subsequent adjustment to the shock. Employing a comprehensive person-level panel dataset matched with workplace-level employer data for the period 1999 to 2010, I exploit the dismantling of import quotas on Chinese textile and clothing products in conjunction with China's accession to the WTO as a quasi-natural experiment and utilize within-industry heterogeneity in workers' exposure to this trade shock. Results reveal negative and significant impact of the low-wage import shock on workers' future earnings and employment trajectories. The main channels through which the trade...	Hâle Utar
8	2023	Automation: Theory, Evidence, and Outlook ↗ This review directly addresses the theoretical task-based model that underpins the project's theoretical axis and provides a comprehensive survey of the automation literature central to the empirical applications. It synthesizes key mechanisms like displacement and productivity effects, offering essential background for understanding the impact of robot adoption and technology shocks studied in the project. This article reviews the literature on automation and its impact on labor markets, wages, factor shares, and productivity. I first introduce the task model and explain why this framework offers a compelling way to think about recent labor market trends and the effects of automation technologies. The task model clarifies that automation technologies operate by substituting capital for labor in a widening range of tasks. This substitution reduces costs, creating a positive productivity effect, but it also reduces employment opportunities for workers displaced from automated tasks, creating a negative displacement effect. I survey the empirical literature and conclude that there is wide...	Pascual Restrepo
8	2025	The dynamics of automation adoption: Firm-level heterogeneity and aggregate employment effects ↗ This paper is closely related to the project as it directly investigates the automation/robots domain central to the Acemoglu & Restrepo (2020) framework and the broader task-based model. It provides empirical evidence on firm-level heterogeneity and aggregate effects of automation adoption, addressing key themes of displacement versus productivity effects within the shift-share methodology context. We investigate the impact of investment in automation-related goods on adopting and non-adopting firms in the Italian economy during 2011–2019. We integrate datasets on trade activities, firms’, and workers’ characteristics for the population of Italian importing firms and estimate the effects on adopters’ outcomes within a difference-in-differences design exploiting import lumpiness in product categories linked to automation technologies (including robots). We find a positive average adoption effect on the adopters’ employment: firms are, on average, around 3% larger in terms of employment after an automation spike. Crucially, the employment effect is heterogeneous across firms: a positive...	Laura Bisio, Angelo Cuzzola, Marco Grazzi, et al.
8	2011	Immigrants-Natives Complementarities in Production. Evidence from Italy This paper is closely related as it applies the seminal Card (2001) shift-share instrument design to estimate the effects of immigration on native labor market outcomes. It directly engages with the methodological and empirical context of immigration research by extending the standard identification framework with a structural production model. This paper studies the impact of immigration on the Italian labor market using administrative data on Italian private-sector employees during the period 1987-2004. The analysis adopts a structural model based on a three level CES production function extending the model in Card (2001) in order to allow for imperfect substitution both between immigrants and natives within the same area-skill cell, and between females and males within the same area-skill-immigration status cell. The endogeneity of labor supply is controlled for by using an instrument based on the past immigrants' settlement as in Card (2001). The results, robust to the offsetting role of natives out-migration, provide evidence...	Agnese Romiti
8	2023	Robots and Workers: Evidence from the Netherlands ↗ This paper directly investigates the automation axis of the project by estimating the labor market effects of robot adoption in the Netherlands, a core application of shift-share designs in the literature. It complements the US-based evidence from Acemoglu and Restrepo (2020) by providing international comparative evidence on how task-specific technology shocks affect worker earnings and employment. We estimate the effects of robot adoption on firm-level and worker-level outcomes in the Netherlands using a large employer-employee panel dataset spanning 2009-2020. Our firm-level results confirm previous findings, with positive effects on value added and hours worked for robotadopting firms and negative outcomes on competitors in the same industry. Our worker-level results show that directly-affected workers (e.g., bluecollar workers performing routine or replaceable tasks) face lower earnings and employment rates, while other workers indirectly gain from robot adoption. We also find that the negative effects from competitors’ robot adoption load on directly-affected workers, while other...	Daron Acemoğlu, Hans Koster, Ceren Özgen
8	2025	Digitalization and regionalization of Global Value Chains in European industries ↗ This paper directly employs the Bartik shift-share IV methodology to analyze regionalization in Global Value Chains, aligning closely with the project's methodological focus on IV construction and diagnostics. It applies the technique to a relevant economic domain (trade and production networks) while incorporating modern technology shocks (AI/ICT) that parallel the automation and task-based mechanisms discussed in the project. Abstract This paper explores the relationship between digitalization and the regionalization of Global Value Chains (GVCs) in European industries. The paper discusses the theoretical channels through which digital technologies may influence GVC regionalization and develops a conceptual framework to guide the empirical analysis. The analysis focuses on the manufacturing sectors of a sample of European countries in the period 2005–2018. To econometrically identify the causal effect of digital technologies on regionalization, we implement a Bartik instrumental variables approach exploiting patent data on information and communication technologies (ICT) and artificial intelligence (AI). Our...	Anna Giunta, Enrico Marvasi, Marco Sforza
8	2022	Robots and Trade ↗ This paper directly addresses the intersection of automation and trade, a core theme in the project's empirical applications involving robot adoption and import competition. It provides theoretical and calibrated evidence on how robotization in developed and developing countries affects trade patterns and labor markets, offering relevant context for understanding the mechanisms behind shift-share instruments in these domains. In this chapter, we first use a Ricardian framework to examine the impact on developing countries of robotization in developed countries. Drawing on Artuc, Bastos and Rijkers (2018), in Section 2 we present theory and evidence indicating that robot adoption in the high-wage advanced economies promoted trade between developed and developing countries. We highlight that such adoption can ultimately benefit workers in developing countries, particularly through lower prices and increased demand for intermediate inputs. The impact of robotization is shown to depend on the initial degree of robotization. In Section 3, we extend this framework by adding China explicitly to the calibrated model...	Erhan Artuç, Paulo Bastos, Alexander Copestake, et al.
8	2024	The impact of robots on unemployment duration: Evidence from the Chinese General Social Survey ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation domain of the project by investigating the causal effects of robot adoption on labor market outcomes, specifically unemployment duration, aligning with the Acemoglu & Restrepo (2020) framework. It provides valuable empirical evidence on the structural unemployment mechanisms and heterogeneous impacts across skill groups and demographics that are central to the theoretical and empirical axes of the research project. The issue of the impact of robot applications on unemployment duration remains relatively unexplored. Using individual-level data from the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS), we shed new light on the effects of robots on unemployment likelihood and duration. Major findings include that: (1) robots prolong the duration of unemployment, particularly for workers in routine occupations compared with those in non-routine occupations. This phenomenon can be understood as a form of structural unemployment; (2) workers with low skills, low economic and occupational status, and parenting responsibilities suffer more from the robot shock. In particular, robots adversely affect women's careers, and...	Linhui Wang, Huilin Zhou, Guanghua Wan
8	2022	The institutional wage adjustment to import competition: evidence from the Italian collective bargaining system ↗ This paper directly employs a shift-share instrumental variable strategy to analyze the local labor market effects of import competition, fitting squarely within the project's core trade shock literature. It extends the standard Bartik framework by examining institutional wage adjustments through collective bargaining, offering relevant empirical context on how trade shocks transmit to wages via specific channels. Abstract A growing body of research has contributed to understanding the labour market and political effects of globalization. This article explores an overlooked feature of trade-induced adjustments in the labour market: the institutional aspect. We take advantage of the Italian collectively bargained minimum wage system, which is based on a two-tier structure, whereby the first tier entails setting minimum wages at the national contract level. Using an instrumental variable strategy and exploiting variations in contract-level exposure to trade, we find for the 1995–2003 period that, on average, the surge in imports decreased contractual minimum wages by 1.5%. This impact increases in the...	Alessia Matano, Paolo Naticchioni, Francesco Vona
8	2021	Offshoring, computerization, labor market polarization and top income inequality ↗ This paper closely relates to the task-based model and automation literature by quantifying the roles of computerization and offshoring in labor market polarization and income inequality. It provides valuable structural context for understanding the mechanisms underlying the occupational exposure measures central to the researcher's theoretical axis. This paper proposes a model of occupational choice with heterogeneous agents in terms of human capital to quantify the role of offshoring and computerization in labor market polarization and increased top income inequality. We find that both offshoring and computerization played a major role regarding labor market polarization in the US over the period 1975–2008. We further show that the last decades can be decomposed into two subperiods. Computerization is the main driver of labor market polarization from 1975 to the mid 1990s, after which globalization (through decreased costs of offshoring) explains more than 70% of job and wage polarization. Our model can also explain around 40% of the...	Laurent Cavenaile
8	2024	Employer and Employee Responses to Generative AI: Early Evidence ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis by applying exposure indices to Generative AI, a key emerging topic in the automation literature. It provides relevant empirical evidence on how new AI technologies differentially affect white-collar occupations, extending the task-based model framework central to the project's scope. We examine employer and employee responses to the release of Generative AI by constructing a high-frequency, forward-looking measure of exposure to Generative AI. Using a generalized difference-in-differences approach, we find that, unlike previous generations of automation, Generative AI primarily affects white-collar jobs that require critical thinking and creativity. Moreover, we find a heterogeneous effect: Generative AI complements high-level white-collar jobs but substitutes for low-level ones. Consistent with the concept of skill-biased technological change, we further find that firms with greater exposure to Generative AI significantly increase emphasis on Generative AI and machine...	Philip G. Berger, Wei Cai, Lin Qiu, et al.
8	2022	Unintended consequences of trade integration on child labor ↗ This paper applies a shift-share design similar to the China shock literature to estimate the causal impact of import exposure on child labor, directly engaging with the methodological and empirical frameworks of the project. It utilizes local industry composition weights to predict exposure to foreign import shocks, aligning closely with the core shift-share instrument construction and the analysis of local labor market effects studied in the project. We reassess the impact of greater trade integration on child labor by using a unique database for Brazil where import and export shocks originating from China are allowed to affect child labor through local labor market outcomes. Contrary to existing results in that trade liberalization in developing countries is associated with less child labor regardless the type of trade shock, we find that increases in exports are associated with less child labor whereas increases in imports are related to more child labor. Our results suggest that trade liberalization in Brazil over the 2000 to 2010 period was not necessarily a winner-winner event as locations more exposed to positive variations of...	Erik Alencar de Figueirêdo, Luiz Renato Lima
8	2024	Automation and Gender: Implications for Occupational Segregation and the Gender Skill Gap ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) methodology to study automation exposure using historical industry composition as weights, a core methodological component of the project. It provides empirical evidence on the gendered effects of robot adoption and occupational shifts, aligning with the automation and task-based model axes of the research. We examine the differential effects of automation on the labor market and educational outcomes of women relative to men over the past four decades.Although women were disproportionately employed in occupations with a high risk of automation in 1980, they were more likely to shift to high-skill, high-wage occupations than men in over time.We provide a causal link by exploiting variation in local labor market exposure to automation attributable to historical differences in local industry structure.For a given change in the exposure to automation across commuting zones, women were more likely than men to shift out of routine task-intensive occupations to high-skill, high wage occupations over...	Patricia Cortés, Ying Feng, Nicolás Guida-Johnson, et al.
8	2015	The China Syndrome in US: Import Competition, Crime, and Government Transfer This paper directly applies the China shock shift-share design to analyze the causal impact of import competition on local crime rates and government transfers. It aligns closely with the project's focus on the societal consequences of trade shocks within the US labor market context. In this paper, we exploit the exogenous rise of Chinese imports in US to investigate the effect of import competition on crime at county level. Our results indicate that counties with high exposure to Chinese import competition are with high crime rates while the exposure effect on property crime is much larger than that for violent crime: one standard deviation increase of exposure will increase 2.1 more violent crimes in the county while such increase of exposure will cause 26.5 more property crimes. Interestingly, we find that the crime impact of exposure to Chinese import competition disappears in counties with high government transfer.	Yi Che, Xun Xu
8	2024	Automation and Rent Dissipation: Implications for Wages, Inequality, and Productivity ↗ This paper is closely related as it investigates the labor market consequences of automation, a central empirical application of the researcher's project. It provides key theoretical and empirical insights into how automation affects wages and inequality, complementing the task-based framework and shift-share methodology discussed in the project. This paper studies the effects of automation in economies with labor market distortions that generate worker rents—wages above opportunity cost—in some jobs. We show that automation targets high-rent tasks, dissipating rents and amplifying wage losses from automation. It also reduces within-group wage dispersion for exposed groups. Automation-driven rent dissipation is inefficient and reduces (and could even negate) the productivity gains from automation. Using data for the US from 1980 to 2016, we find evidence of sizable rent dissipation and reduced within-group wage dispersion due to automation. Using these estimates and accounting for equilibrium effects, we estimate that automation...	Daron Acemoğlu, Pascual Restrepo
8	2025	Global value chains in a world of uncertainty and automation ↗ The paper directly addresses the project's axis on automation and global value chains by linking industrial robot adoption to reshoring decisions. It engages with the shift-share literature on automation exposure and its broader macroeconomic implications, fitting the empirical applications and theoretical task-based model themes. The world economy has become more and more globalized as firms have organized production along global value chains. But more recently, globalization has stalled. In a recent paper, we show that higher uncertainty, in combination with better automation technologies, has likely contributed to that trend reversal. We show that plausibly exogenous exposure to uncertainty in developing countries leads to reshoring to high-income countries, but only if industrial robots have made this economically feasible. In contrast, we find no strong evidence of nearshoring or diversification.	Marius Faber, Kemal Kılıç, Gleb Kozliakov, et al.
8	2022	The Impact of Industrial Robots on the Skill-Based Wage Gap ↗ This paper is closely related to the project as it investigates the labor market effects of industrial robot adoption, a core empirical application of shift-share designs in the automation literature. It specifically examines the skill-biased wage gap, addressing key mechanisms like substitution and demand effects that are central to the task-based model and Acemoglu & Restrepo's framework. In recent years, with the disappearance of the demographic dividend of the aging society and the requirements for high-quality economic development under the new normal, the application of industrial robots has rapidly advanced in the Chinese market. As an emerging driving force of technological progress, artificial intelligence has its own technological bias, but the existing literature has not paid attention to whether this bias will widen the income distribution gap of labor with heterogeneous skills. Based on this, this paper uses the panel data of 30 provinces from 2006 to 2015 to describe the application level of industrial robots with the import volume of industrial robots, and...	Han Yang
8	2024	The effects of robots on internal migration: Evidence from China ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation/robots empirical application axis by investigating the labor market effects of industrial robot adoption in an emerging market context. It extends the core shift-share methodology's implications by analyzing migration responses, a key general-equilibrium outcome linked to the project's focus on bridging partial and general equilibrium effects. Abstract China has experienced a boom of industrial robots in the past decade. Under the shock of robotization on labor market, migration is a critical way to rebalance the economy. While many studies have investigated the influence of robotization on labor market in the automation‐advanced countries, few works shed light on the situation in the emerging market. We provide empirical evidence on the effect of industrial robots on intercity migration in China. We find that, industrial robot adoption has a significant negative effect on the net inflow migration by reducing population inflows, while has little effect on population outflows. The decline in population inflows is concentrated...	Xiaoyu Bian, Guangsu Zhou
8	2017	High-Skilled Immigration, STEM Employment, and Non-Routine-Biased Technical Change ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis regarding non-routine-biased technical change and the polarization of employment, which are core concepts in the task-based model underlying shift-share designs. It connects high-skilled immigration to technology shocks, offering relevant context for the theoretical underpinnings of automation and labor market exposure indices. We study the role of foreign-born workers in the growth of employment in STEM occupations since 1980. Given the importance of employment in these fields for research and innovation, we consider their role in a model featuring endogenous non-routine-biased technical change. We use this model to quantify the impact of high-skilled immigration, and the increasing tendency of such immigrants to work in innovation, on the pace of non-routine-biased technical change, the polarization of employment opportunities, and the evolution of wage inequality since 1980.	Nir Jaimovich, Henry Siu
8	2019	The Impact of Technology and Trade on Migration: Evidence from the US ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share design to analyze the labor market impacts of two core topics in the project: the China trade shock and robot adoption. It provides valuable empirical evidence on how these specific technological and trade shocks influence migration, a key adjustment mechanism in local labor markets. Migration has long been considered one of the key mechanisms through which labor markets adjust to economic shocks. In this paper, we analyze the migration response of American workers to two of the most important shocks that have hit Western economies since the late 1990s – import competition from China and the introduction of industrial robots. Exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in exposure across US local labor markets over time, we first verify that both shocks led to a steep reduction in manufacturing employment. Next, we present our main results, and show that, on average, robots caused a sizable reduction in population size, whereas trade with China did not. The decline in...	Marius Faber, Andrés Sarto, Marco Tabellini
8	2019	Technological Change and Occupations over the Long Run ↗ This paper provides a long-historical perspective on technology exposure using patent-text overlap, a method directly analogous to the occupation-level shift-share instruments discussed in the project's theoretical axis. Its findings on differential impacts across manual and cognitive tasks offer valuable context for understanding the structural mechanisms underlying automation and polarization effects central to the researcher's inquiry. We construct occupation-specific indicators of technological change that span two centuries (1850-2010) using textual analysis of patent documents and occupation task descriptions. For each patent, we identify the set of occupations it is most closely related to based on the similarity of the patent document to the occupation’s task description and construct occupation-level indices of innovation exposure by using the extracted patent/occupations similarities and a measure of breakthrough innovations introduced in Kelly et al (2018). Our occupation-level indices are significantly negatively correlated with future employment and wage growth; employment declines are especially pronounced...	Leonid Kogan, Dimitris Papanikolaou, Lawrence Schmidt, et al.
8	2022	Racial and Ethnic Inequality and the China Shock ↗ This paper directly applies the China shock literature framework to analyze heterogeneous labor market effects across racial groups, a key empirical application of the Bartik instrument design. It provides crucial context on distributional impacts and local labor market dynamics relevant to the project's focus on import exposure and its consequences. We examine how the labor market effects of import competition vary across Black, Hispanic, and white populations. For a given level of exposure to imports from China, we find no evidence that minority workers are relatively more harmed than white workers in terms of their manufacturing employment. However, Hispanic workers are overrepresented in exposed industries and therefore face greater manufacturing employment losses relative to whites on net. In addition, they experienced relative losses in non-manufacturing employment, largely due to their lower educational attainment and baseline industry mix. Overall, the China shock increased the Hispanic-white employment gap by about 5%, though...	Lisa Kahn, Lindsay Oldenski, Geunyong Park
8	2024	The EPOCH of AI: Human-Machine Complementarities at Work ↗ This paper directly contributes to the theoretical axis by introducing a new task-exposure metric (EPOCH scores) that classifies occupations based on their potential for human-machine augmentation versus substitution. It aligns with the project's focus on occupation-level exposure indices for emerging technologies like AI, providing empirical evidence on how these specific complementary capabilities affect labor market outcomes. We introduce the EPOCH framework (Empathy, Presence, Opinion, Creativity, and Hope) to capture human capabilities that complement, rather than substitute, artificial intelligence. Using network-based methods that map task interdependencies across all U.S. occupations, we develop three metrics: (i) an EPOCH score measuring human-intensive skills, (ii) a potential-for-augmentation score, and (iii) a risk-of-substitution score. This framework explicitly distinguishes AI’s roles in augmenting versus automating work, addressing a key gap in the literature. Our results show a clear shift toward more human-intensive work. New tasks emerging in 2024 carry significantly higher EPOCH scores than...	Isabella Loaiza, Roberto Rigobón
8	2020	Offshoring and non-monotonic employment effects across industries in general equilibrium ↗ This paper directly engages with the project's central concern regarding the distinction between local partial-equilibrium effects and aggregate general-equilibrium effects in shift-share analyses. It provides a theoretical and empirical framework for understanding how cross-industry linkages in general equilibrium can generate non-monotonic outcomes, offering critical context for interpreting Bartik-style estimates of offshoring. We address the mismatch between existing theoretical models and standard empirical practice in the analysis of the labor market effects of offshoring. While theory focuses on one-sector or two-sector models, empirical studies exploit variation in offshoring across a large number of industries, typically including a linear offshoring term in the analysis. Thereby, these studies implicitly assume a monotonic relationship between offshoring and labor market outcomes and ignore general-equilibrium effects across industries. We analyze the effects of offshoring across a continuum of industries with different shares of offshorable tasks that are linked through labor and capital markets in general...	Daniel Baumgarten, Michael Irlacher, Michael Koch
8	2023	The Local Labor Market Effects of Modern Manufacturing Capital: Evidence from France ↗ This paper is closely related to the project as it empirically investigates the labor market effects of automation, a core empirical application of shift-share designs. It provides relevant evidence on the balance between displacement and productivity effects, directly engaging with the task-based model framework central to the researcher's theoretical axis. Using an event study methodology and comprehensive micro data from the French manufacturing sector, we analyze the local labor market effects of investments in modern manufacturing capital, including modern automation technologies. We estimate that commuting zones with higher investments in modern manufacturing capital and automation benefit from higher labor demand, with an increase in both local employment and wages. Our findings are consistent with a task-based model where the productivity effects of modern capital investments and automation outweigh their displacement effect.	Philippe Aghion, Céline Antonin, Simon Bunel, et al.
8	2025	Artificial intelligence, tasks, skills, and wages: Worker-level evidence from Germany ↗ This paper directly aligns with the theoretical axis by applying the task-based framework to construct an AI exposure measure analogous to the shift-share instruments discussed in the project. It provides relevant empirical evidence on how technology shocks affect wages and task content, contributing to the literature on automation and the distinction between different technological exposures. This paper examines how new technologies are linked to changes in the content of work and individual wages. As a first step, it documents novel facts on task and skill changes within occupations over the past two decades in Germany. We furthermore reveal a distinct relationship between ex-ante occupational work content and ex-post exposure to artificial intelligence (AI) and automation (robots). Workers in occupations with high AI exposure perform different activities and face different skill requirements compared to workers in occupations exposed to robots, suggesting that robots and AI are substitutes for different activities and skills. We also document that changes in the task and skill...	Erik Engberg, Michael Koch, Magnus Lodefalk, et al.
8	2025	Impact of robots and artificial intelligence on labor and skill demand: evidence from the UK ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation/robots axis of the project by constructing occupational exposure indices to both robot and AI technologies using patent text analysis, a method explicitly listed in the theoretical axis. It provides empirical evidence on labor market polarization and skill demand shifts, which are core mechanisms underlying the task-based model and shift-share designs discussed in the project. Abstract Over the past four decades, automation technologies have replaced routine tasks performed by medium-skilled workers, and contributed to increased labor market polarization. With the advent of artificial intelligence, this dynamic may have shifted, extending task substitution to non-routine tasks performed by high-skilled workers. Using textual analysis and descriptions of technology found in patent texts, we construct novel occupational exposures to robot and artificial intelligence technologies. These occupational exposures are then used to analyze changes in labor and skill demand over the last decade in the United Kingdom. We find that the middle part of the income distribution...	Martin Lábaj, Tomáš Oleš, Gabriel Procházka
8	2023	Trade Shocks, Labour Markets and Migration in the First Globalisation ↗ This paper closely relates to the trade shocks axis by applying a shift-share-like identification strategy using foreign trade data as instruments to estimate local labor market effects, mirroring the 'China shock' methodology. It provides historical context and tests the robustness of findings regarding trade-induced labor market dynamics by incorporating migration responses, a key mechanism often discussed in the general equilibrium implications of Bartik-style instruments. Abstract This paper studies the economic and political effects of a large trade shock in agriculture—the grain invasion from the Americas—in Prussia during the first globalisation (1870–913). We show that this shock led to a decline in the employment rate and overall income. However, we do not observe declining per capita income and political polarisation, which we explain by a strong migration response. Our results suggest that the negative and persistent effects of trade shocks we see today are not a universal feature of globalisation, but depend on labour mobility. For our analysis, we digitise data from Prussian industrial and agricultural censuses on the county level and combine them...	Richard Bräuer, Felix Kersting
8	2022	Firm Innovation under Import Competition from Low-Wage Countries ↗ This paper directly addresses the China shock literature by examining the impact of import competition on firm innovation, a key empirical application of shift-share designs. It employs an instrumental variable strategy using foreign demand shifts to identify causal effects, aligning with the project's focus on methodological nuances and exclusion restriction considerations in trade shock studies. In recent years, manufacturing firms in the United States have faced increasing import competition from low-wage countries, especially China. Does this competition hurt or help innovation by firms? This paper studies the effect of the surge in imports from China on innovation in the US manufacturing sector. We first propose a simple theoretical framework which generates an inverted U-shaped curve of innovation on imitation, that is based on the endogenous price elasticity of demand for the product in a Cournot model. We then take the theoretical prediction to the data by combining patent, firm, and trade data during 1990-2010 for US publicly-listed firms in the Compustat dataset. We find...	Ujjayant Chakravorty, Runjuan Liu, Ruotao Tang, et al.
8	2020	Trade Liberalization and the Gender Employment Gap in China ↗ This paper applies the shift-share logic of import exposure to analyze gender-specific labor market outcomes, directly engaging with the trade shock empirical axis of the project. It complements the China shock literature by examining heterogenous effects, which are crucial for understanding the distributional implications of local partial-equilibrium estimates. This paper investigates the impact of import liberalization induced labor demand shocks on male and female employment in China. Combining data from population and firm censuses between 1990 and 2005, we relate prefecture-level employment by gender to the exposure to tariff reductions on locally imported products. Our empirical results show that increasing import competition has kept more females in the workforce, reducing an otherwise growing gender employment gap in the long run. These dynamics were present both in local economies as a whole and among formal private industrial firms. Examining channels through which tariff reductions differentially affect males and females, we find that...	Feicheng Wang, Krisztina Kis‐Katos, Minghai Zhou
8	2023	Robots, Natives and Immigrants in US local labor markets ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation axis of the project by examining the differential labor market effects of industrial robot adoption on natives versus immigrants. It employs a shift-share design to identify local robot exposure, fitting within the methodological framework of using task-content-based instruments to purge local demand variation. I analyze the impact of industrial robots on the employment of natives and immigrants in US local labor markets between 1990 and 2014. The proposed mechanism, through which robot adoption affects the employment of natives and immigrants differentially, is based on two facts: first, robots tend to displace workers based on the task content of occupations, and second, natives and immigrants in the US differ in their task specialization. Therefore, robots should affect their employment unequally. Exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in robot exposure across US local labor markets over time, I test this mechanism and find that the effect on immigrants is roughly 1.76 times greater than that...	Muhammad Aslam Asgha Tariq Javed
8	2014	Offshoring, Low-Skilled Immigration, and Labor Market Polarization ↗ [Title only] This title explicitly links offshoring and immigration, which are classic shift-share instruments, with labor market polarization, a core empirical application of the research project's theoretical axis. It likely explores the intersection of these forces on routine-biased technical change or task-based models, fitting directly within the automation and trade shock domains. No abstract available.	Federico Mandelman, Andrei Zlate
8	2024	Robots and immigration ↗ This paper applies a shift-share methodology to examine the causal relationship between immigration labor supply shocks and local robot adoption, directly intersecting the project's axes on automation and immigration. It provides empirical evidence on how labor composition influences technology diffusion, serving as a relevant case study for the interaction between different shift-share instruments. Changes in local labor supply may affect robot adoption by firms. We test this hypothesis by exploiting an increase in the number of workers and a change in the local workforce composition induced by exogenous immigration into Danish municipalities. Using the Danish employer-employee matched dataset over the period 1995-2019, we show in a shift-share regression that a larger share of non-Western immigrants in a municipality leads to fewer robot adoptions at the firm-level. Several demographic characteristics, including prime age and low skill level, make immigrant workers particularly substitutable for robots. As many advanced economies are facing labor shortages, this paper sheds light on...	Katja Mann, Dario Pozzoli
8	2024	Will Industrial Robots Terminate Enterprise Innovation?—An Empirical Evidence from China’s Enterprise Robot Penetration ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation/robots application domain by examining the effects of industrial robot adoption on firm-level outcomes, consistent with the Acemoglu & Restrepo literature. However, it focuses on innovation performance rather than the standard labor market outcomes (employment, wages) or the specific shift-share identification strategy details central to the project's methodological focus. The widespread adoption of industrial robots in the manufacturing sector has significant implications for the innovation behaviors of enterprises. This paper examines the impact of industrial robot adoption on the innovation performance of listed manufacturing companies in China from 2000 to 2017 through a quasi-natural experiment. The result shows that the impact of industrial robot adoption on enterprise innovation performance is significantly and robustly positive. Furthermore, this paper highlights two primary pathways through which this impact is realized. First, the adoption of industrial robots induces exogenous shocks that reshape enterprise behavior, driving the...	Qihang Li, Yituan Liu, Wenjie Li, et al.
8	2024	What workers and robots do: An activity-based analysis of the impact of robotization on changes in local employment ↗ This paper directly addresses the empirical applications axis of the project by examining the local labor market effects of robot adoption, a core topic in the automation literature. It utilizes an exposure-based approach similar to shift-share designs to analyze heterogeneous impacts across activity-based occupation groups, aligning closely with the task-based model theoretical framework. This work investigates the impact that changes in the local exposure to robots had on changes in Italian employment over the period 2011–2018. It contributes to the debate by providing novel and granular evidence on the impact of robot adoption on new activity-based groups of occupations and by focusing on the overlap between the functional similarities of robot applications and occupations. This framework, consistently centered on workers’ and robots’ activities, reveals highly heterogeneous effects of robotization, ranging from positive to negative across different groups of occupations, thereby supporting a nuanced and granular reading of this debated phenomenon. In particular, the local...	Mauro Caselli, Andrea Fracasso, Sergio Scicchitano, et al.
8	2019	The China Syndrome Affects Banks: The Credit Supply Channel of Foreign Import Competition ↗ This paper directly addresses the 'China shock' empirical application within the shift-share literature by analyzing the secondary effects of import competition on bank credit supply. It utilizes the local exposure to foreign shocks, consistent with the core methodology studied, to uncover important general equilibrium channels and credit market dynamics. Abstract Did the rise of Chinese import competition in the early 2000s affect banks’ credit supply policies? Using bank-firm-level data on the universe of Spanish corporate loans, we find that banks rebalanced their loan portfolios away from firms facing Chinese import competition and toward profitable firms in nonexposed sectors. Banks supplied more credit also to the construction sector, albeit independently of firms’ profitability. This was not due to banks’ exposure to the housing boom. Rather, the geographical concentration of the manufacturing industries competing with China left local banks with few alternatives other than local construction firms to rebalance their loan portfolios.	Sergio Mayordomo, Omar Rachedi
8	2021	Trade and inequality in Europe and the US ↗ This review extensively discusses the China shock literature, which is a central empirical application of shift-share designs in trade economics. It summarizes key findings on labor market outcomes, inequality, and social impacts that are directly analyzed using the Bartik instrument methodology described in the project. Many economies in Western Europe have experienced a sizeable increase in income inequality since the 1980s, and inequality has grown even more rapidly in the United States. Whereas educated workers in skilled occupations benefited from rising salaries, wages have stagnated for many less educated workers in unskilled occupations. The rising inequality in advanced economies coincided with a period of globalisation that was characterised by rapid growth in international merchandise trade. Basic economic models predict that trade could contribute to greater inequality in skill-abundant advanced economies, as globalisation leads such countries to specialise in skill-intensive industrial sectors...	David Dorn, Peter Levell
8	2024	Exposure to Artificial Intelligence and Occupational Mobility: A Cross-Country Analysis ↗ This paper directly addresses the project's theoretical axis by analyzing occupational exposure to AI, utilizing the task-based framework central to automation and AI literature. It provides relevant empirical context on how AI exposure influences occupational mobility and labor market outcomes, aligning with the study of technology-driven structural change. We document historical patterns of workers' transitions across occupations and over the life-cycle for different levels of exposure and complementarity to Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Brazil and the UK. In both countries, college-educated workers frequently move from high-exposure, low-complementarity occupations (those more likely to be negatively affected by AI) to high-exposure, high-complementarity ones (those more likely to be positively affected by AI). This transition is especially common for young college-educated workers and is associated with an increase in average salaries. Young highly educated workers thus represent the demographic group for which AI-driven structural change...	Mauro Cazzaniga
8	2010	Immigration and Occupation in Europe ↗ This paper directly addresses the immigration axis of the project by analyzing how immigrant inflows affect native occupation choice and task specialization in Europe. It aligns with the task-based theoretical framework and the broader shift-share literature's focus on labor market reallocations driven by labor supply shocks, specifically examining the substitution between manual-routine and abstract-complex tasks. In this paper we analyze the effect of immigrants on natives’ job specialization in Western Europe. We test whether the inﬂow of immigrants changes employment rates or the chosen occupation of natives with similar education and age. We ﬁnd no evidence of the ﬁrst and strong evidence of the second: immigrants take more manual-routine type of occupations and push natives towards more abstract complex jobs, for a given set of observable skills. We also ﬁnd some evidence that this occupation reallocation is larger in countries with more ﬂexible labor laws. As abstract-complex tasks pay a premium over manual-routine ones, we can evaluate the positive effect of such reallocation on the wages of...	Francesco D’Amuri, Giovanni Peri
8	2011	The Impact of Immigration on Native Poverty through Labor Market Competition This paper is closely related to the immigration empirical application axis, specifically addressing the labor market effects of immigration on native workers' wages and subsequent welfare outcomes. It utilizes a general equilibrium framework to analyze local and national impacts, contributing to the broader literature on immigration shocks and their distributional consequences. In this paper I first analyze the wage effects of immigrants on native workers in the US economy and its top immigrant-receiving states and metropolitan areas. Then I quantify the consequences of these wage effects on the poverty rates of native families. The goal is to establish whether the labor market effects of immigrants have significantly affected the percentage of "poor" families among U.S.-born individuals. I consider the decade 2000-2009 during which poverty rates increased significantly in the U.S. As a reference, I also analyze the decade 1990-2000. To calculate the wage impact of immigrants I adopt a simple general equilibrium model of productive interactions, regulated by the...	Giovanni Peri
8	2024	Help for the Heartland? The Employment and Electoral Effects of the Trump Tariffs in the United States ↗ This paper directly engages with the trade shock literature and the 'China shock' empirical domain central to the project, analyzing local labor market effects of import competition and retaliation. It employs geographic exposure measures akin to shift-share designs to examine both economic outcomes and political polarization, addressing key themes of exclusion restrictions and general equilibrium impacts on specific regions. We study the economic and political consequences of the 2018-2019 trade war between the United States, China and other US trade partners at the detailed geographic level, exploiting measures of local exposure to US import tariffs, foreign retaliatory tariffs, and US compensation programs. The trade-war has not to date provided economic help to the US heartland: import tariffs on foreign goods neither raised nor lowered US employment in newly-protected sectors; retaliatory tariffs had clear negative employment impacts, primarily in agriculture; and these harms were only partly mitigated by compensatory US agricultural subsidies. Consistent with expressive views of politics, the tariff war...	David Autor, Anne Beck, David Dorn, et al.
8	2025	Robots and firm investment ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation/robots application axis by empirically assessing the magnitude of robot adoption and its effects on firm-level investment and labor markets. It provides critical counter-evidence to the significant labor market displacement effects often highlighted in foundational shift-share studies, thereby engaging with the core methodological and empirical debates surrounding robot exposure indices. Using cross-country and German administrative data on robotization, we show that the impact of robots on firms and labor markets is limited. First, investment in robots is small and highly concentrated in a few industries, representing less than 0.3% of aggregate expenditures on equipment. Second, robotization does not grow as rapidly as Information Technology did in the past, and current growth is driven by gains in developing countries. Third, firms invest in robots when they face difficulties in finding workers and subsequently increase employment after the investment. The total employment effect in exposed industries and regions is negative but modest in magnitude. We discuss why the...	Efraim Benmelech, Michał Zator
8	2022	Italy: Immigration and the evolution of populism ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) IV methodology to study the impact of immigration, a core empirical application listed in the project's scope. It provides relevant evidence on how immigration shocks influence political outcomes, extending the typical labor market analysis to the political polarization dimension covered in the trade shock literature. We study the effect of immigration on the upsurge of right-wing populism in Italy. Our data considers electoral results at the municipality level of the Senate of the Italian Republic and the Chamber of Deputies over the period 2006–2018. Using an IV strategy based on the shift–share instrument, we find that immigration generates a sizable causal increase in votes for the right-wing populist party Lega. Immigration also works as a major catalyst for the electoral distance between Lega and its most direct competitors. We explore how different levels of tax autonomy impact the results, as well as how the re-branding of Lega as a national movement affects the relation between immigration and...	Luca Pieroni, Melcior Rosselló Roig, Luca Salmasi
8	2024	The Effect of Immigration on Housing Prices: Evidence from 382 German Districts ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) instrumental variable methodology to study the economic effects of immigration, a core empirical domain of the project. It provides relevant evidence on how immigration shocks propagate to housing markets, extending the standard focus on labor outcomes to include local price adjustments. This study provides evidence of the causal impact of immigration on housing prices and rents using an extensive dataset from Germany that covers 382 administrative districts over the period 2004 − 2020. Employing a panel-data approach and a manually constructed Bartik instrument, we show that international migration has a significantly positive short-term effect on flat prices and rents. House prices are not significantly affected. We estimate that an increase in international migration of 1% of the initial district population causes a hike in flat prices of up to 3% as well as a hike in flat rents of about 1%. The increase in flat prices is more than twice as high as this at the lower end...	Umut Ünal, Bernd Hayo, Işıl Erol
8	2025	Robots and firm reshoring ↗ This paper directly investigates the labor market consequences of robot adoption, a core empirical application of the shift-share design in the automation literature. It extends the Acemoglu & Restrepo (2020) framework by linking technological exposure to reshoring decisions and firm-level employment effects. ABSTRACT This paper investigates the impact of firms’ adoption of robots on reshoring, distinguishing between reshoring from developed (medium- and high-income) and developing (low-income) countries. It also examines whether reshoring occurs through the substitution of foreign suppliers with domestic ones or through in-house production. The study further analyses the effect of robotisation-induced reshoring on firms’ employment. To estimate causal effects, we employ a combination of two-way fixed effects and Difference-in-Differences estimators with staggered adoption. The findings indicate that robot adoption leads to reshoring, primarily from developed countries, driven by the...	Carolina Calatayud, María Engracia Rochina Barrachina
8	2024	Mental health in nursing homes: The role of immigration in the long-term care workforce ↗ This paper directly employs the shift-share instrumental variable design to estimate the causal effect of immigration inflows on local labor market outcomes in the nursing home sector, aligning with the project's focus on immigration applications and methodological tools. It contributes to the literature by applying this identification strategy to a specific health outcome domain, thereby extending the empirical scope of shift-share methods in labor economics. One-fourth of nursing home residents are diagnosed with anxiety disorders and approximately half live with depression. Nursing homes have long struggled with staffing shortages, and the lack of care has further heightened the risk of poor mental health. A key solution to both problems could be immigration. Prior studies have documented how immigrant labor could strengthen the long-term care workforce. We add to this picture by exploring the impact of immigrant inflows on the mental health outcomes of nursing home residents. Using a nationally representative dataset and a shift-share instrumental variable approach, we find empirical evidence that immigration reduces diagnoses of depression...	Hankyung Jun, David C. Grabowski
8	2020	Worker and Firm Responses to Trade Shocks: The UK-China Case ↗ This paper applies the shift-share instrument framework to a foreign shock variant (UK-China trade) to estimate the labor market effects of import competition, directly extending the core empirical applications of the project. It provides relevant evidence on worker mobility and firm dynamics that complements the existing literature on the China shock and automation-induced polarization. We exploit the recent surge in Chinese export growth to study the effects of a trade shock on a foreign market - the UK. We find that individuals initially employed in sectors highly exposed to Chinese imports earned less and remained out of employment longer than workers in sectors that were less exposed to import competition in the period 2000-2007. Earnings losses were most severe when workers remained in the same industry, whereas those who switched out of their 2-digit sector were able to mitigate these losses. The effects are heterogeneous across the distribution of earnings within the same age cohort, with initially better-paid workers suffering less in terms of employment and...	Josh De Lyon, João Paulo Pessoa
8	2024	Import Competition, Formalization, and the Role of Contract Labor ↗ This paper directly addresses the trade shock axis by empirically analyzing the local labor market effects of the China shock, specifically focusing on firm formalization and labor reallocation mechanisms. It aligns closely with the project's scope by utilizing Chinese import variation to identify causal impacts on employment outcomes, a core application of shift-share designs in the trade literature. Abstract Does higher import competition increase formalization and aggregate productivity? Exploiting plausibly exogenous variation from Chinese imports, we provide empirical causal evidence that higher imports increases the share of formal manufacturing enterprise employment in India. This formal share increase is due to both the rise in formal-enterprise employment driven by high-productivity firms, and a fall in informal-enterprise employment. The labor reallocation is enabled by the formal firms’ hiring of contract workers, who do not carry stringent firing costs. Overall, Chinese import competition increased formal-sector employment share by 3.7 percentage points, and aggregate labor...	Pavel Chakraborty, Rahul Singh, V. Soundararajan
8	2023	Automation: Theory, Evidence, and Outlook ↗ This paper directly addresses the project's theoretical axis by reviewing the task-based model that underpins automation and shift-share designs. It provides essential context for understanding the mechanisms of robot adoption and labor market effects discussed in the empirical applications axis. This article reviews the literature on automation and its impact on labor markets, wages, factor shares, and productivity. I first introduce the task model and explain why this framework offers a compelling way to think about recent labor market trends and the effects of automation technologies. The task model clarifies that automation technologies operate by substituting capital for labor in a widening range of tasks. This substitution reduces costs, creating a positive productivity effect, but it also reduces employment opportunities for workers displaced from automated tasks, creating a negative displacement effect. I survey the empirical literature and conclude that there is wide...	Pascual Restrepo
8	2024	The impact of robots on labor demand: evidence from job vacancy data in South Korea ↗ This paper applies a shift-share (Bartik) instrumental variable design using regional robot exposure to estimate the causal impact of automation on labor demand, directly aligning with the project's methodological and empirical focus. It provides relevant international evidence extending the core automation literature, specifically addressing how robot adoption affects manufacturing and routine jobs while leaving service sectors unaffected. The debate about the impact of robots on employment has been lively. In this paper, I examine the effect of robots on local labor demand in South Korea, one of the most technologically advanced countries in terms of robotics. Using the regional variation in robot exposure constructed from national industry-level robot adoption data and the initial distribution of industrial employment in cities, I find that robots did not reduce local labor demand. However, I estimate declines in labor demand in the manufacturing sector and routine jobs. An increase in one robot per 1000 workers in terms of exposure to robots is correlated with a decline in the job vacancy growth rate of 2.6%p in the...	Hyejin Kim
8	2024	Closing Ranks: Organized Labor and Immigration ↗ This paper directly employs the shift-share instrumental variable design to analyze the impact of immigration on labor market outcomes, fitting squarely within the project's core methodological and empirical axes. By using a shift-share instrument to isolate exogenous immigration shocks, it contributes to the literature on immigration effects and the interaction between labor supply shocks and institutional responses like unionization. This paper shows that immigration fostered the emergence of organized labor in the United States. I digitize archival records to assemble the first county-level dataset on historical U.S. union membership and use a shift-share instrument to isolate a plausibly exogenous labor supply shock induced by immigration, between 1900 and 1920. Counties with higher immigration experienced increases in union presence, the number of union branches, the share of unionized workers, and the number of union members per branch. These effects were more pronounced among skilled workers, particularly in counties more exposed to labor competition from immigrants, and in areas with more negative attitudes toward...	Carlo Medici
8	2024	De-routinization in the Fourth Industrial Revolution – Firm-Level Evidence ↗ [Title only] This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis of the project by applying the task-based model and de-routinization framework to the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution using firm-level data. It likely contributes to the automation/robots domain by updating or extending the occupation-level exposure indices (like RTI) to newer technologies, fitting squarely within the researcher's interest in how technology shocks affect labor markets via task content. No abstract available.	Melanie Arntz, Sabrina Genz, Terry Gregory, et al.
8	2016	Chinese Import Competition, Crime, and Government Transfers in US ↗ This paper applies the Chinese import exposure shift-share instrument to examine the causal effect on crime rates, fitting directly within the trade shock empirical application axis. It extends the literature by linking the primary Bartik-style trade shock to social outcomes like crime and government transfers, thereby providing relevant background on the broader societal impacts of the identified shocks. This paper exploits the exogenous rise of Chinese imports in US to investigate the effect of import competition on crime at the county level. The results indicate that counties with high exposure to Chinese import competition have high crime rates. The exposure effect on property crime is much larger than that on violent crime. A one standard deviation increase in exposure causes 32 more violent crimes in the county, while such increase in exposure causes 256 more property crimes. Interestingly, we find that the crime impact of exposure to Chinese import competition becomes smaller in counties with high government transfers.	Yi Che, Xun Xu, Yan Zhang
8	2024	Trading Places: Mobility Responses of Native- and Foreign-Born Adults to the China Trade Shock ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share IV framework to the China trade shock literature, examining labor market adjustment mechanisms like immigration mobility. It complements the core design by analyzing how local demand conditions and worker heterogeneity interact with import exposure instruments in empirical settings. Previous research finds that the greater geographic mobility of foreign-born workers compared to native-born workers facilitates labor market adjustment to shifting regional economic conditions. The authors examine immigration’s role in enabling US commuting zones to respond to manufacturing job loss caused by import competition from China. Although foreign-born population headcounts fell by a larger proportion than those of the native-born in trade-exposed regions, the contribution of immigration to labor market adjustment in the study period was small. Because most US immigrants arrived in the country after manufacturing regions were already mature, few took jobs in industries that later...	David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon Hanson
8	2022	Economic shocks and clinging ↗ This paper directly engages with the China shock literature by utilizing the Bartik-style shift-share instrument to analyze the political and social consequences of import competition on white Americans. It contributes to the empirical applications axis by extending the analysis beyond standard labor market outcomes to include attitudes on immigration and cultural issues, a key theme in the political polarization strand of this research. Abstract We test whether the economic effects of globalization change the social and political attitudes of white Americans. Specifically, we examine the effect of a local labor market's exposure to import competition brought about by the rapid changes in the Chinese economy from 1990 to 2007 on perceptions of immigrants, minorities, religion and guns. We do not find meaningful changes in aggregate attitudes. Instead, using detailed information from the General Social Survey, we find evidence of significant hardening of existing attitudes or “clinging” to long‐standing beliefs.	Michael R. Strain, Stan Veuger
8	2023	Short‐ and long‐run labor market adjustment to import competition ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share methodology to analyze labor market adjustments to import competition, extending the China shock literature to the Mexican context. It provides valuable empirical evidence on the dynamic effects of trade shocks, aligning closely with the project's focus on labor market outcomes and the distinction between short- and long-run impacts. Abstract By exploiting spatial variation in import exposure arising from initial differences in industry specialization, we analyze how local labor markets in Mexico adjusted to increased Chinese‐import competition over different time horizons. The initial adjustment to the shock took various forms: a decline in the number of wage employees, a substitution of wage employees with piece‐rate or outsourced workers, and a substitution of formal employees with informal employees. The negative effects on employment were mainly associated with job destruction from exiting firms, particularly those that were small and medium‐sized. During periods in which employment fell, the population that...	Juan S. Blyde, Matías Busso, Kyunglin Park, et al.
8	2020	Import exposure and welfare effects from the expenditure channel: The case of Mexico ↗ This paper directly extends the China shock literature by analyzing the welfare implications of import competition through the expenditure channel, a key component of the project's trade shock axis. It complements the standard focus on labor market outcomes by detailing how local price changes affect household welfare, thereby enriching the empirical context of shift-share designs in trade. Abstract A rise in import competition can put downward pressure on local prices increasing consumer's welfare, but these gains might be unequal across households depending on the basket of goods consumed. Using a consumer price index that varies at the product and city level from Mexico, this paper analyses the impact of import competition from low‐wage countries, and particularly China, on price growth between 2002 and 2017. I find that the trade shock impacted prices. Had import competition remained unchanged, the 15‐year change in the consumer price index would have been seven percentage points higher, on average across all goods, with a much larger impact on the products highly exposed...	Juan S. Blyde
8	2020	Heterogeneous Effects of Chinese Import Competition on Chilean Manufacturing Plants ↗ This paper applies the shift-share (Bartik) instrumental variable design to analyze the plant-level impacts of the 'China shock' on manufacturing outcomes, directly mirroring the core empirical applications of the project. It utilizes a foreign-shift variant similar to the ADH 2013 framework to isolate supply-side shocks, providing relevant evidence on heterogeneity and firm dynamics within the trade shock literature. We study the effect of a trade induced competitive shock given by rising import competition from China on Chilean manufacturing plants. For identification, we exploit the fact that, during 1995-2006, China import penetration (CIP) increased sharply in Chile, but this increment was quite different across manufacturing industries. We use Chinese export growth in high-income industry-country pairs as instrument for CIP. Our results suggest that plants in more exposed industries exhibit relative declines in revenue, employment and physical capital, and face a higher probability of exiting the panel than comparable plants in less exposed industries. All these effects are concentrated among...	Andrés César, Guillermo Falcone
8	2023	The Layoff Generation: How Generative Ai Will Reshape Employment and Labor Markets ↗ The paper develops an 'AI Augmentation' metric to quantify generative AI exposure across job roles, directly aligning with the project's theoretical axis on task-based models and new AI-capability indices. It provides relevant empirical evidence on how AI technology shocks affect labor markets, serving as a contemporary application of the shift-share methodology to automation. This research presents a new metric known as "AI Augmentation," aimed at quantifying the influence of generative AI across diverse job roles, organizations, and sectors. The analysis defies prevailing expectations of job losses due to AI, instead demonstrating a reverse correlation between AI Augmentation and layoff rates. These counterintuitive findings highlight the importance of a detailed, multifaceted examination of AI's impact on labor markets. This nuanced understanding is vital for making informed strategic decisions and developing effective policies.	Qiwen Huang, Yifan Shen, Yuanchi Sun, et al.
8	2024	Automation and disappearing routine occupations in Japan ↗ This paper provides direct empirical evidence on the effects of automation on labor markets in Japan, aligning closely with the project's focus on robot adoption and the task-based model of polarization. It examines shifts in employment between routine and non-routine occupations, serving as a key cross-country case study for the mechanisms underlying the automation literature. We examine the implications of automation technology in Japan since 1980, comparing different local labor markets with different degrees of automation exposure. First, we do not find evidence that automation reduces employment rate within demographic groups and automation encourages workers to move from regular to non-regular employment. Second, we show that automation shifts employment from routine occupations in the manufacturing sector to service sectors, while increasing the share of establishments and sales in the manufacturing sector. Finally, we show that this shift in labor demand is attributed to younger generations and non-college-educated workers.	Shinnosuke Kikuchi, Ippei Fujiwara, Toyoichiro Shirota
8	2024	Does increasing robot density exacerbate wealth inequality? ↗ This paper directly addresses the empirical applications axis of the project by investigating the effects of robot adoption, a core topic in the automation literature. It employs instrumental variable techniques to estimate the causal impact of robot density on household wealth inequality, extending the standard labor market outcomes to distributional consequences. This article expands the economic consequences of applying automation technology beyond the labor market to encompass wealth distribution. It empirically investigates the effects of changes in robot density on household wealth inequality and potential mechanisms. By using three-digit industry codes provided by the China Census 1 % sampling data in 2015, this paper achieves a more accurate matching of industrial robot data with individual data and employs instrumental variables to alleviate potential endogeneity bias. This paper finds that increasing robot density exacerbates the inequality of family wealth, and this effect has a particularly significant impact on young labor force and...	Nan Jia, Xueling Yan, Shule Yu
8	2022	Automation, Market Concentration, and the Labor Share ↗ This paper directly engages with the automation and robot adoption theme central to the project, specifically focusing on the economic mechanisms behind robot use and their macroeconomic consequences. It connects micro-level technology adoption decisions to broader labor market outcomes like market concentration and the labor share, providing relevant context for the theoretical and empirical axes of the research. Since the early 2000s, a rising share of production has been concentrated in a small number of superstar firms. We argue that the rise of automation technologies and the cross-sectional variation of robot use rates have contributed to the increases in industrial concentration. Motivated by empirical evidence, we build a general equilibrium model with heterogeneous firms, endogenous automation decisions, and variable markups. Firms choose between two types of technologies, one uses workers only and the other uses both workers and robots subject to an idiosyncratic fixed cost of robot operation. Larger firms are more profitable and are thus more likely to choose the automation technology. A...	Hamid Firooz, Zheng Liu, Yajie Wang
8	2024	Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Which Jobs Will AI Replace After All?: A New Index of Occupational Exposure ↗ This paper introduces a new shift-share style exposure index (GENOE) for AI, directly aligning with the project's theoretical axis on task-based models and recent LLM task-exposure measures. It provides a novel methodology for constructing occupational exposure metrics, which is central to the empirical and theoretical framework of the researcher's project. This paper introduces the AI Generated Index of Occupational Exposure (GENOE), a novel measure quantifying the potential impact of artificial intelligence on occupations and their associated tasks. Our methodology employs synthetic AI surveys, leveraging large language models to conduct expert-like assessments. This approach allows for a more comprehensive evaluation of job replacement likelihood, minimizing human bias and reducing assumptions about the mechanisms through which AI innovations could replace job tasks and skills. The index not only considers task automation, but also contextual factors such as social and ethical considerations and regulatory constraints that may affect the...	Miguel Benítez, Eric Parrado
8	2014	Value Added Exports and U.S. Local Labor Markets: Does China Really Matter? ↗ This paper is closely related as it directly engages with the China shock literature by applying the shift-share methodology to estimate local labor market effects of trade exposure. It offers a valuable methodological extension by distinguishing between value-added exports in intermediate and final goods, thereby refining the measurement of import competition shocks central to the project's empirical axis. Measuring the effects of international trade on labor market outcomes has never been more important given the increasing interconnections among economies around the globe. However, using measures of exposure to trade flows based on gross exports may lead to a misleading picture given that production processes have essentially become globalized, allowing firms to have access to imported inputs as an example. We consider the effects of international trade by building a model with firm heterogeneity where firms have the ability to offshore the production of inputs. Our model highlights that international trade offers an opportunity for firms to become more productive by engaging in off-shoring...	Leilei Shen, Peri Silva
8	2021	Trade Competition and the Decline in Union Organizing: Evidence from Certification Elections ↗ This paper applies the China shock instrument to a novel outcome—union organizing—thereby extending the empirical trade shock literature central to the project. It directly engages with the local labor market effects of import exposure, a key mechanism explored in the core shift-share methodology. The long-term decline in U.S. workers' attempts to organize labor unions accelerated after 2000. We find that the swift rise of imports from China arising from a change in trade policy accounts for nearly all of this post-2000 acceleration: union certification elections decreased substantially among workers in manufacturing industries directly exposed to imports, but also among workers indirectly exposed through their local labor market. Consistent with a simple model of workers' decision to seek union representation, direct exposure lowered the expected wage gain from unionization, whereas indirect exposure increased the cost of job loss - both of which discourage organizing.	Kerwin Kofi Charles, Matthew S. Johnson, Nagisa Tadjfar
8	2020	The Rise of Robots and the Fall of Routine Jobs ↗ This paper is closely related as it provides foundational cross-country evidence on the impact of robot adoption on routine manual jobs, a key mechanism in the automation literature central to the project. It utilizes task-based exposure measures that parallel the occupation-level shift-share designs and supports the theoretical framework linking technology shocks to differential effects on task content. This paper examines the impact of industrial robots on jobs. We combine data on robot adoption and occupations by industry in 37 economies for the period 2005–2015. We exploit differences across industries in technical feasibility—defined as the industry’s share of tasks replaceable by robots—to identify the impact of robot usage on employment. The data allow us to differentiate effects by the routine intensity of employment. We find that a rise in robot adoption relates significantly to a fall in the employment share of routine manual task-intensive jobs. This relation is observed in high-income economies, but not in emerging market and transition economies.	Gaaitzen J. de Vries, Elisabetta Gentile, Sébastien Miroudot, et al.
8	2024	The US–China Trade War: Quantify the Negative Shocks to Local Housing Markets and Land-Based Finance in Chinese Cities ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share methodology to analyze the local economic impacts of trade shocks in China, mirroring the core design of the China shock literature. It closely aligns with the project's focus on import exposure, local labor market effects, and the methodological axis of shift-share instruments, although it extends the application to housing and fiscal channels. The US–China trade war’s impacts on Chinese cities’ housing markets and local public finance are examined. In China, institutional reforms and ever-growing housing prices in the past resulted in land-based finance that city governments heavily rely on land sales (state-land use-right transfers) for fiscal revenues. However, the trade war has severely struck the cities’ housing markets and land sales since 2018. This article applies 2016–2019 data to a shift-share analysis and finds the following. Imposed by the US on imports from China, the retaliatory tariffs hurt Chinese cities’ production and caused employment and wage declines and firm exit. Importantly, the tariff shocks also affected...	Boning Li, Wen‐Chi Liao, Weizeng Sun, et al.
8	2024	Does the high-tech foreign investment spark robot adoption in the developing world? Evidence from China ↗ This paper is closely related as it empirically investigates the drivers of robot adoption in manufacturing, a central topic within the automation and shift-share literature. It provides relevant international evidence on how external shocks, such as high-tech FDI, influence local technology diffusion mechanisms distinct from but complementary to the standard trade or immigration shift-share designs. With the intensification of transnational economic activities, industrial robots have been making inroads into developing countries. However, few studies have analyzed how foreign direct investment (FDI) affects the diffusion of industrial robots among domestic enterprises in developing countries. To bridge the gap, we combine several datasets to empirically examine the causal relationship between high-tech FDI and the robot adoption by domestic manufacturers in China. We discover a significantly positive impact of high-tech FDI on the adoption of industrial robots by domestic manufacturers, evidenced by the expansion in both stock and flow, as well as an increase in the variety of robots...	Bo Yuan, Pengbo Sun
8	2023	The China shock and job reallocation in Japan ↗ This paper closely relates to the project by applying the shift-share trade shock framework to a non-US context, specifically examining the labor market impacts of the China shock in Japan. It addresses key empirical themes such as import competition, job reallocation, and the distinction between local and aggregate effects, which are central to the trade shocks axis of the research. This study investigates the characteristics of manufacturing job reallocation in Japan induced by import shocks from China during 1996–2016. Three types of import shocks are considered: direct, upstream, and downstream. Some salient features of job reallocation include decrease in total jobs from direct import, increase in small establishments’ jobs from downstream import, and job changes mainly induced establishments’ entry and exit. The sizeable difference of implied job changes in industry-level analysis and those in region-level analysis attributes to the local reallocation and aggregate demand effects determined by regional characteristics. The total job effect of three import shocks...	Masahiro Endoh
8	2024	Import competition, credit reallocation, and small business lending ↗ This paper utilizes the China shock as an import competition shock, a core empirical application of the shift-share design in the trade literature. It extends the standard focus on local labor markets by examining the credit reallocation channel and spillover effects on non-exposed areas, directly engaging with the mechanisms and identification strategies central to the project. Abstract Using import competition from China as a funding shock, we find that banks curtail small business loans in non‐exposed counties, while preserving their core markets with branch presence. The results are robust to alternative measures of bank exposure to import competition, alternative classifications of exposed counties, placebo tests, reverse causality, and others. Bank capital mitigates the propagation of trade shocks to non‐exposed counties, and banks increase small business lending in non‐exposed counties with less social capital. We also document the effects of import competition on local establishments and private sector wages of non‐exposed counties via the bank lending...	Saiying Deng, Xiaoling Pu
8	2020	Rural Job Loss to Offshoring and Automation ↗ [Title only] This paper directly addresses the core automation and offshoring shocks central to the project's empirical applications, likely analyzing their combined impact on local labor markets. It aligns with the task-based model theoretical axis and the shift-share methodology used to estimate exposure to these structural economic changes. No abstract available.	Srikant Devaraj, Emily J. Wornell, Dagney Faulk, et al.
8	2015	Trade and Labor Market Dynamics ↗ This paper is closely related to the project as it analyzes the local labor market effects of the China trade shock using a dynamic structural model that accounts for spatial heterogeneity and frictions. It directly addresses the methodological concern of distinguishing local partial-equilibrium effects from aggregate general-equilibrium outcomes, which is a key theme in the theoretical axis of the research project. We develop a dynamic trade model with spatially distinct labor markets facing varying exposure to international trade. The model captures the role of labor mobility frictions, goods mobility frictions, geographic factors, and input-output linkages in determining equilibrium allocations. We show how to solve the equilibrium of the model and take the model to the data without assuming that the economy is at a steady state and without estimating productivities, migration frictions, or trade costs, which can be difficult to identify. We calibrate the model to 22 sectors, 38 countries, and 50 U.S. states. We study how the rise in China's trade for the period 2000 to 2007 impacted U.S. households...	Lorenzo Caliendo, Maximiliano Dvorkin, Fernando Parro
8	2023	Robot Imports and Employment Location Choice ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation/robots axis of the project by examining the labor market effects of industrial robot imports in China. It utilizes mechanisms consistent with the task-based model, specifically analyzing skill-biased and routine-biased effects on worker location choices, which aligns with the theoretical and empirical frameworks studied. As the “pearl at the top of the manufacturing industry,” the widespread use of robots is affecting the employment decisions of individual workers. This paper contributes to our understanding of this subject by analyzing the impact of imports of industrial robots on employment location choice at the inter-provinces level in China. The analysis applies a logit approach to microdata from the China Customs Database and China Labor Dynamics Survey. The results suggest that robot import positively affects employment location choice, supporting the theory of “coexistence” between intelligent robots and the labor force. Specifically, industrial robots attract skilled workers via the creation effect...	Kai Liu, Keying Hu, Yanyan Wang, et al.
8	2025	Robots & AI exposure and wage inequality: a within occupation approach ↗ This paper is closely related to the project's theoretical and empirical axes, specifically addressing automation exposure and its impact on wage inequality within the task-based framework. It extends the literature on robot and AI adoption by distinguishing between technologies and analyzing their differential effects on within-occupation wage dispersion. This paper examines the linkages between occupational exposure to recent automation technologies and inequality across 19 European countries. Using data from the European Union Structure of Earnings Survey (EU-SES), a fixed-effects model is employed to assess the association between occupational exposure to artificial intelligence (AI) and to industrial robots–two distinct forms of automation–and within-occupation wage inequality. The analysis reveals that occupations with higher exposure to robots tend to have lower wage inequality, particularly among workers in the lower half of the wage distribution. In contrast, occupations more exposed to AI exhibit greater wage dispersion, especially...	Florencia Jaccoud
8	2024	New Technologies: End of Work or Structural Change? ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation and AI components of the project's empirical and theoretical axes, specifically discussing the task-based reallocation and polarization effects central to the shift-share methodology. It aligns with the literature on technology shocks affecting labor market outcomes, providing relevant context for understanding the structural changes driven by such instruments. Abstract This paper examines the impact of new technologies, particularly automation and artificial intelligence (AI), on labor markets. The existing literature documents ambiguous and only limited overall employment effects, while new technologies induce significant shifts in workforce composition. The implied firm-level productivity gains primarily benefit larger, skilled-labor-intensive firms. AI adoption remains limited but continues to reshape skill demands. The implied worker reallocation is costly, exacerbating inequality. This calls for policies such as targeted support for displaced workers, investment in education and skill development, promoting technology diffusion, and...	Emilie Rademakers, Ulrich Zierahn
8	2024	Economic shocks, gender, and populism: Evidence from Brazil ↗ This paper employs a shift-share design to examine the political polarization effects of labor market shocks, directly aligning with the project's focus on trade/automation shocks and their societal consequences. It applies the methodological framework to a novel context (gender-specific exposure in Brazil) while addressing the broader theme of how economic shocks influence political outcomes, a key application area for the Bartik instrument literature. This paper investigates whether differential exposure to a labor market shock by gender contributed to the rise of far-right populism in Brazil. Using a shift-share approach, we find that gender heterogeneity in shock exposure predicts electoral outcomes. Male-specific labor demand shocks increase support for Jair Bolsonaro in the 2018 presidential election, but female-specific shocks have the reverse effect. These opposing effects are accompanied by an unprecedented gender gap in political preferences, with men becoming relatively more conservative. Our preferred interpretation is that Bolsonaro’s conservative rhetoric – shared by several other right-wing populists – generates appeal among...	Laura Barros, Manuel Santos Silva
8	2022	Internal Migration and Labor Market Outcomes in Indonesia ↗ This paper directly employs a Bartik shift-share instrument to study labor market impacts of migration, aligning closely with the project's methodological and empirical axes on immigration and instrumental variable design. It extends the standard shift-share framework by addressing exclusion restriction violations through a multi-instrument approach, offering relevant insights for the methodological discussion on identification assumptions and diagnostics. We study the labor market effects of domestic migration in Indonesia. To address the endogeneity of migrants’ settlement decisions, we use an internal migration version of the Bartik shift-share instrument based on information about historical migration patterns from the Indonesian censuses. The multi-instrument approach we use allows us to account for persistent effects of past migration that could otherwise violate the exclusion restriction. We find that internal migration is associated with an increase in migrant employment and a decrease in native employment. Less educated natives in low-education regencies are most affected. Policies looking to minimize the adverse effects of internal...	Tushar Bharati, Adnan Fakir, Wina Yoman
8	2024	TRADE SHOCKS AND HIGHER‐ORDER EARNINGS RISK IN LOCAL LABOR MARKETS ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share design to the China shock, focusing on higher-order earnings risk and idiosyncratic volatility in local labor markets. It aligns closely with the project's empirical axis on trade shocks and worker-level earnings trajectories, offering specific insights into the distributional consequences of import competition. Abstract This article investigates the relationship between international trade and asymmetrical labor income risk. Using the case study of Brazil, we inspect how an increase in import penetration following the China shock impacted the distribution of idiosyncratic earnings changes across the country's local labor markets. We find that an increase in import penetration leads to a more dispersed and negatively skewed distribution. These effects can be explained by an increase in the volatility of hours worked following job and industry transitions, particularly from involuntary job separations.	Tomás Martinez, Úrsula Mello
8	2021	The Impact of Chinese Import Competition on Italian Manufactoring ↗ [Title only] This paper likely applies the China shock shift-share instrumental variable framework to analyze local labor market effects in Italy, fitting squarely within the trade shock empirical applications axis. It addresses the core methodology of using industry exposure to Chinese imports to identify causal impacts on regional economic outcomes, though it may involve specific regional heterogeneity or general equilibrium considerations. No abstract available.	Luca Citino, Andrea Linarello
8	2018	An Examination of Industry Mix Demand Indicators: The Bartik Instrument at Twenty-Five ↗ This paper provides a direct methodological examination of the Bartik instrument, addressing the shares-based identification framework central to the researcher's project. It offers practical insights into instrument construction and endogeneity concerns that are highly relevant to the methodological axis of the study. Bartik's (1991, 1993) approach to identifying shocks in demand to regional economies has been used extensively for nearly thirty years. We chronicle the development of Bartik-type shift-share instruments and examine the empirical performance of alternative versions that use different combinations of national shift and local share variables in their construction. We offer three main findings. First, instruments constructed from shares that omit employment in non-traded sectors empirically dominate versions that include total employment. Second, industrial sectors with high average shares and low variation across areas are more likely to be non-traded and endogenous. This suggests placing...	Daniel Broxterman, William D. Larson
8	2023	Robot Adoption and Employment Adjustment: Firm-Level Evidence from China ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation/robots axis by providing firm-level evidence on robot adoption effects in China, aligning with the methodological focus on Bartik-style instruments and exclusion restrictions. It contributes to the core empirical debate on whether automation reduces or increases employment, offering relevant insights into the productivity mechanism central to the task-based model literature. This paper investigates the effect of robot adoption on employment adjustment at the firm level in China. Using an instrument that exploits the source of the firm-level variation in robot adoption, we find that using industrial robots increases employment within firms, especially when focusing on the employment of high-educated and high-skilled individuals. We further analyze the mechanisms underlying the effect of robots and find strong support for the productivity effect that robot adopters gain productivity improvement and thereby increase their demand for labor. In addition, we find limited evidence for the intra-industry labor reallocation to robot-adopting firms from their...	Ting Wang, Yi Zhang, Chun Liu
8	2022	Robot Adoption and Employment Adjustment: Firm-Level Evidence From China ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation/robots axis of the project by examining the labor market effects of robot adoption using firm-level evidence from China. It contributes to the empirical literature on how technology shocks, analogous to shift-share instruments in exposure measures, influence employment and wage dynamics through productivity channels. This paper investigates the effect of robot adoption on employment adjustment at the firm level in China. Using an instrument that exploits the source of the firm-level variation in robot adoption, we find that using industrial robots increases employment within firms, especially when focusing on the employment of high-educated and high-skilled individuals. We further analyze the mechanisms underlying the effect of robots and find strong support for the productivity effect that robot adopters gain productivity improvement and thereby increase their demand for labor. In addition, we find limited evidence for the intra-industry labor reallocation to robot-adopting firms from their...	Ting Wang, Yi Zhang, Chun Liu
8	2023	Robots, Meaning, and Self-Determination ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation domain by examining the causal effects of robot adoption on worker well-being and autonomy, extending the scope of Acemoglu & Restrepo (2020) beyond labor market outcomes. It employs instrumental variables to identify these effects, aligning with the methodological focus on shift-share designs and their empirical applications in the economics of technology. This paper is the first to examine the impact of robotization on work meaningfulness and autonomy, competence, and relatedness, which are essential to motivation and well-being at work. Drawing on surveys from workers and industry-specific robotization data across 14 industries in 20 European countries from 2005 to 2021, our analysis reveals a consistent negative impact of robotization on perceived work meaningfulness and autonomy. Using instrumental variables, we find that doubling robotization correlates with a 0.9% decrease in work meaningfulness and a 1% decrease in autonomy. To put this in perspective, aligning the robotization intensity of the top five industry with the leading...	Milena Nikolova, Femke Cnossen, Daniel Bennett
8	2024	Negative Weights are No Concern in Design-Based Specifications ↗ This paper directly addresses methodological concerns regarding Bartik instruments by demonstrating that negative weights do not bias estimands in design-based shift-share specifications. It provides crucial theoretical justification for the validity of the standard econometric approach to shift-share IV analysis. Recent work shows that popular partially-linear regression specifications can put negative weights on some treatment effects, potentially producing incorrectly-signed estimands.We counter by showing that negative weights are no problem in design-based specifications, in which low-dimensional controls span the conditional expectation of the treatment.Specifically, the estimands of such specifications are convex averages of causal effects with "ex-ante" weights that average the potentially negative "ex-post" weights across possible treatment realizations.This result extends to design-based instrumental variable estimands under a first-stage monotonicity condition, and applies to "formula"...	Kirill Borusyak, Peter Hull
8	2019	The Effects of the Chinese Imports on Brazilian Manufacturing Workers ↗ This paper directly applies the trade shock methodology central to the project by estimating the local labor market effects of Chinese import penetration on Brazilian manufacturing workers. It provides relevant empirical context for the 'China shock' literature, specifically addressing heterogeneous effects across skill groups and the distinction between Chinese and rest-of-world import shocks. This study examines the impacts of imports from China and from the Rest of the World (ROW) on the wages of Brazilian manufacturing workers during 2000–2012. In this period, import penetration in Brazil grew by 25 percent, and the Chinese share of it increased from 3 to 20 percent. Using household survey data that encompass both formal and informal workers, we find that imports from China and from the ROW had different effects on manufacturing skilled and unskilled workers’ wages. Both the skilled and unskilled workers were negatively affected by an increase in the Chinese import penetration of intermediate inputs. For skilled workers, the ROW import penetration effect was negative for...	Lourenço S. Paz, Kul Kapri
8	2018	New Perspectives on the Decline of U.S. Manufacturing Employment ↗ This paper directly addresses the empirical context of the project by providing evidence for both trade and technology explanations behind manufacturing employment decline. It aligns with the core themes of the China shock and automation literatures, offering critical micro-level insights relevant to the theoretical and empirical axes of the research. We use relatively unexplored dimensions of US microdata to examine how US manufacturing employment has evolved across industries, firms, establishments, and regions from 1977 to 2012. We show that these data provide support for both trade- and technology-based explanations of the overall decline of employment over this period, while also highlighting the difficulties of estimating an overall contribution for each mechanism. Toward that end, we discuss how further analysis of these trends might yield sharper insights.	Teresa Fort, Justin R. Pierce, Peter K. Schott
8	2023	Import penetration and workplace safety ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share instrumental variable design to the China shock literature, a core empirical application of the project. It extends the domain of trade shock effects by investigating the impact on workplace safety rather than traditional labor market outcomes. We examine how import penetration from China affects corporate workplace safety in U.S. manufacturing firms. Using Chinese import penetration to other eight developed countries as an instrument, we find that import penetration to the U.S. worsens worker safety. We identify two underlying economic mechanisms through which import penetration impairs workplace safety—resource constraints for safety-related investments and reduced employee safety compliance due to heightened job insecurity among U.S. workers. Finally, we find that the negative effect of import competition on worker safety is attenuated in firms that experience heightened product differentiation and market concentration...	Saiying Deng, Connie X. Mao, Xiaoling Pu, et al.
8	2025	The sectoral origins of heterogeneous spending multipliers ↗ This paper is closely related to the project's empirical application axis, specifically the study of fiscal policy and government spending multipliers using military spending heterogeneity, a key example of a shift-share style design discussed in the Nakamura & Steinsson (2014) context. It contributes directly to the theoretical axis by analyzing the distinction between local partial-equilibrium effects and aggregate general-equilibrium effects, which is a central unifying concern of the project. The aggregate spending multiplier crucially depends on the sectoral origin of government purchases. To establish this result, we characterize analytically the response of aggregate output to sector-specific government spending shocks in a tractable production-network economy, showing how it maps into various characteristics of the shocked sector. The response is larger when government spending originates in sectors with a relatively small contribution to private final demand, low markup, high labor intensity, and in those located downstream in the supply chain. We confirm these predictions and evaluate their quantitative relevance within a calibrated multi-sector model of the U.S. economy...	Hafedh Bouakez, Omar Rachedi, Emiliano Santoro
8	2015	Local Fiscal Multipliers, Negative Spillovers and the Macroeconomy ↗ This paper directly engages with the Nakamura & Steinsson (2014) fiscal multiplier methodology by extending the military spending instrument to account for negative spillover effects from national spending. It provides crucial empirical context for the project's unifying concern regarding the distinction between local partial-equilibrium effects and aggregate general-equilibrium outcomes. This paper analyzes the impact of within-state military spending and national military spending on a state's employment. I estimate that, while within-state spending increases that state's employment (i.e., a positive local effect), an increase in national military spending ceteris paribus decreases employment in the state (i.e., a negative spillover effect). The combined local and spillover effects imply an aggregate employment effect that is close to zero. The estimates are consistent with a resource reallocation explanation: Persons take jobs in or move to a state with increased military spending, but they leave when increased out-of-state military spending creates opportunities...	Bill Dupor
8	2021	Trade ↗ This chapter provides a comprehensive survey of the 'China shock' literature, directly addressing the project's core empirical application of trade shocks and their local labor market effects. It contextualizes the distributional consequences of import competition, which are central to the empirical analysis of shift-share instruments in trade research. Abstract This chapter surveys the literature on the relationship between international trade and inclusive growth. It examines claims that the rise in inequality in many countries can be attributed to the concurrent rise in trade competition, especially from EMEs like China, spurring trade tensions and protectionist measures. The chapter investigates the conflicting literature showing the aggregate benefits of trade versus the adverse and persistent impact of trade, especially import competition, on specific industries and local communities. It then reviews the evidence for using trade policies and other complementary policies for adjustment and compensation to those groups adversely...	Marc Bacchetta, Valerie Cerra, Roberta Piermartini, et al.
8	2025	Routine-Biased Technological Change and Endogenous Skill Investments ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation axis of the project by examining the labor market effects of robot adoption, a core empirical application of shift-share instruments. It complements the theoretical task-based framework and provides crucial evidence on endogenous skill adjustments that inform the distinction between partial and general equilibrium outcomes. We investigate how individuals alter their educational investments in response to routine-biased technology. We find that individuals growing up in robot-impacted areas are more likely to complete a bachelor’s degree and experience a relative increase in earnings. Changes in the skill premium and opportunity cost appear to drive these effects. To interpret these findings, we estimate a model of endogenous skill acquisition where changes in the demand and supply of skills shape the path of earnings. Counterfactual simulations suggest that the endogenous skill response cannot fully undo the adverse earnings effects of automation unless there are sufficiently generous educational subsidies...	Danyelle Branco, Bladimir Carrillo, Wilman J. Iglesias
8	2025	Does immigration affect native wages? A meta-analysis ↗ This paper directly addresses the immigration application axis of the project by synthesizing evidence on the causal impact of immigration on native wages. It explicitly evaluates shift-share instrumental variable strategies, a core methodological component of the researcher's project, highlighting their role in correcting bias and shaping empirical findings. The impact of immigration on native wages remains a contentious issue in labour economics. This meta-analysis synthesises evidence from 88 studies published between 1985 and 2023, offering a comprehensive assessment of reduced-form estimates. We document substantial heterogeneity across estimates and show that contexts and empirical designs systematically shape reported effects. In particular, shift-share instrumental-variable strategies correct the upward bias seen in OLS estimates. Our findings emphasise the necessity for replication and enhanced transparency in methodological reporting. • We conduct a meta-analysis synthesising findings from 88 studies published between 1985 and 2023 on...	Amandine Aubry, Jérôme Héricourt, Léa Marchal, et al.
8	2023	Openness and the welfare state: risk and income effects in protection without protectionism ↗ This paper directly utilizes the China shock literature's core mechanism—using regional variation in import competition to identify causal effects—aligning with the trade shock application axis. It also addresses the political polarization outcomes of such shocks, which is a key empirical domain within the researcher's project. Have recent trends in globalization changed the positive link between trade openness and social insurance? The consensus view – that voters want better social insurance against income loss the more open the economy – is seemingly contested by the rise of new right-wing parties and the China shock. We present a theoretical framework of risk and income effects of globalization that captures the conventional view, but also shows when it will be modified: When the income effect is negative, the political support for social insurance can decline in spite of the risk effect. We construct an empirical measure of welfare state support across European regions and leverage the rapid integration of...	Erling Barth, Henning Finseraas, Anders Kjelsrud, et al.
8	2024	The flip side of the China syndrome: Local labor market effects in China ↗ This paper applies the shift-share methodology to analyze the reverse side of the 'China syndrome' by examining local labor market effects of export exposure in China. It provides crucial empirical evidence on how trade shocks induce structural transformation in labor markets, directly complementing the domestic import-competition literature central to the project. Abstract US–China trade is widely thought to have contributed significantly to the decline in US manufacturing employment, sometimes called the China syndrome. Flipping the point of view, we examine its impact on Chinese local labor markets between 2000 and 2010. In prefectures most exposed to export growth, there is a pronounced increase in manufacturing employment, primarily among young, low‐educated, rural people and more for blue‐collar workers. Beyond manufacturing, there is a decline in agricultural, yet an expansion in service employment, exhibiting substantial heterogeneity across demographics. The export‐driven structural transformation is profound and long‐lasting out to 2020...	Difei Ouyang, Weidi Yuan
8	2022	Field and Natural Experiments in Migration ↗ The paper directly addresses the project's focus on migration by explicitly discussing the use, implications, and limitations of shift-share instrumental variables. It provides relevant methodological guidance and discusses the heterogeneity of causal estimates, which aligns with the project's interest in identification frameworks and empirical applications in the migration domain. Many research and policy questions surrounding migration are causal questions. What causes people to migrate What are the consequences of migration for the migrants, their families, and their communities Answering these questions requires dealing with the self-selection inherent in migration choices. Field and natural experiments offer methodological approaches that enable answering these causal questions. This paper discusses the key conceptual and logistical issues that face applied researchers when applying these methods to the study of migration, as well as providing guidance for practitioners and policymakers in assessing the credibility of causal claims. For randomized experiments...	Dean Yang, David McKenzie
8	2018	Global Value Chains and Business Cycle ↗ This paper employs a shift-share design using destination-specific shocks and industry shares, which directly engages with the methodological frameworks and instrument construction central to the project. It provides valuable empirical context on how supply chain positions and inventories interact with demand shocks, contributing to the understanding of transmission mechanisms in production networks. I study the role of industries position in supply chains on the transmission of final demand shocks. First, I use a shift-share design based on destination-specific final demand shocks and destination shares to show that shocks amplify upstream. Quantitatively, I find upstream industries respond to final demand shocks up to three times as much as final goods producers. To organize the reduced form results, I develop a tractable production network model with inventories and study how the properties of the network and the cyclicality of inventories interact to determine whether final demand shocks amplify or dissipate upstream. I test the mechanism both by directly estimating the model and in...	Alessandro Ferrari
8	2021	Immigrant Labor and the Institutionalization of the U.S.-born Elderly ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share instrumental variable design to the immigration domain, aligning with the project's focus on Bartik instruments and their empirical applications. It utilizes the core methodological framework of using local industry or demographic composition shares combined with national shifts to identify causal effects, specifically addressing the immigration application area listed in the project description. The U.S. population is aging. We examine whether immigration causally affects the likelihood that the U.S.-born elderly live in institutional settings. Using a shift-share instrument to identify exogenous variation in immigration, we find that a 10 percentage point increase in the lesseducated foreign-born labor force share in a local area reduces institutionalization among the elderly by 1.5 and 3.8 percentage points for those aged 65+ and 80+, a 26-29 percent effect relative to the mean. The estimates imply that a typical U.S-born individual over age 65 in the year 2000 was 0.5 percentage points (10 percent) less likely to be living in an institution than would have been the case if...	Kristin F. Butcher, Kelsey Moran, Tara Watson
8	2025	Artificial intelligence, hiring and employment: job postings evidence from Sweden ↗ This paper directly engages with the theoretical axis of the project by applying occupation-level task-exposure measures to the emerging domain of Artificial Intelligence, building on the task-based model framework. It provides empirical evidence on how AI exposure affects hiring, contributing to the broader discussion on automation and technological shifts in labor markets. This paper investigates the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on hiring and employment, using the universe of job postings published by the Swedish Public Employment Service from 2014-2022 and universal register data for Sweden. We construct a detailed measure of AI exposure according to occupational content and find that establishments exposed to AI are more likely to hire AI workers. Survey data further indicate that AI exposure aligns with greater use of AI services. Importantly, rather than displacing non-AI workers, AI exposure is positively associated with increased hiring for both AI and non-AI roles. In the absence of substantial productivity gains that might account for this...	Erik Engberg, Mark Hellsten, Farrukh Javed, et al.
8	2021	The China Shock, Employment Protection, and European Jobs ↗ This paper directly addresses the China shock literature by extending the analysis of import competition effects beyond the US to European labor markets, utilizing worker-level data to examine employment transitions. It provides relevant context for the methodological axis by investigating how institutional factors like employment protection interact with trade shocks, offering comparative evidence on the labor market impacts of import competition. The authors investigate the effects of Chinese import competition on transitions into and out of employment using comparable worker-level data for 14 European countries. Results indicate that, on average, Chinese imports are associated with an increased probability that employed workers become unemployed and with a reduction in worker flows from unemployment to employment. In countries with high levels of employment protection, incumbent workers are shielded against the risk of job loss due to Chinese competition, but unemployed workers’ prospects seem to be particularly negatively affected in these countries. The authors also provide evidence that the effects of increased Chinese imports...	Hedieh Aghelmaleki, Ronald Bachmann, Joel Stiebale
8	2022	Effect of Increasing Import Competition from China on the Local Labor Market: Evidence from Sweden ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) methodology to assess the labor market impacts of the 'China shock' in Sweden, aligning closely with the trade shock literature. It provides empirical evidence on employment and wage distribution effects, serving as a key comparative case study for the core mechanisms and results discussed in the project. Import competition from low-wage countries can worsen labor market conditions in high-income countries and undermine the sustainability of free international trade. We examine the effect of increasing manufacturing imports from China on manufacturing employment and wage earnings distribution in Sweden by employing a two-stage least squares estimation method. The empirical results indicate that, except for the transportation sector, the effect of increasing import exposure to China on manufacturing and non-manufacturing employment growth is statistically insignificant. Regarding earnings distribution, we find that the earnings growth of low-wage workers in the manufacturing sector is not...	Zhuhua Jiang, Chizheng Miao, José Arreola Hernández, et al.
8	2015	Globalization's Concentrated Costs (and Benefits): Import Competition, Globally Engaged Firms, and U.S. Presidential Voting 1 This paper is closely related to the trade shock and political polarization applications of shift-share designs, specifically examining how import competition affects electoral outcomes at the subnational level. It extends the empirical context of the China shock literature by linking firm-level engagement in global trade to local voting patterns, a key theme in the project's scope. We study how integration in the global economy influences U.S. presidential elections. National-level (“macro”) voting studies of presidential elections have shown large effects of economic variables on incumbent party vote shares. We extend this work to consider the effects of trade, showing for the first time that increasing imports negatively affect incumbent vote share and increasing exports are associated in increasing vote shares for incumbents. The estimated effects are large and politically consequential. However, macro studies are unable – owing to data limitations – to discriminate among the competing costs and benefits of increased integration in the global economy. To shed new...	J. Bradford Jensen, Dennis P. Quinn, Stephen Weymouth
8	2021	Robots, China and Polls: Structural Shocks and Political Participation in the US ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share design to study the political economy effects of automation and import competition, aligning with the project's empirical applications on robots and the China shock. It investigates the distinction between these two structural shocks' impacts on voter turnout, a key theme in the literature on local labor market consequences of trade and technology. This paper examines the impact of the large structural shocks – automation and import competition – on voter turnout during US federal elections from 2000 to 2016. Although the negative income eﬀect of both shocks is comparable, we ﬁnd that political participation decreases signiﬁcantly in counties more exposed to industrial robots. In contrast, the exposure to rising import competition does not reduce voter turnout. A survey experiment reveals that divergent beliefs about the eﬀectiveness of government intervention drive this contrast. Our study highlights the role of beliefs in the political economy of technological change.	Marina Chugunova, Arnau Juanmarti, Klaus Keller, et al.
8	2024	Import Competition and Domestic Transport Costs ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) instrumental variable framework to the China shock literature, focusing on how domestic transport costs modify local exposure to import competition. It contributes to the project by refining the construction of exposure measures and highlighting the importance of spatial frictions in identifying the geographic distribution of trade shock impacts. With China’s 2001 WTO accession, trade costs between the US and China fell sharply, but the transport costs of Chinese imports within the US remained sizable. We examine whether domestic transport costs shield local labor markets from globalization. Using a shift-share design for industry-level Chinese imports across 42 different ports of entry, we show that the job losses following competing imports are stronger in labor markets near where the imports arrived. Once accounting for domestic transport, import competition models explain labor market changes significantly better. They show smaller coefficient estimates but larger employment losses, as the burden of import competition arises in...	Andrea Caragliu, Michiel Gerritse
8	2016	Import Competition and Internal Migration ↗ This paper is closely related to the project as it directly analyzes the labor market consequences of the China shock, a central empirical application of the shift-share design. It extends the core literature by examining internal migration responses, providing valuable context on how labor mobility adjustments interact with local labor market shocks. Abstract We examine the U.S. internal migration response to increased import competition following the granting of Permanent Normal Trade Relations to China in 2001. Using a variety of data sets and empirical approaches, we find that local labor markets most exposed to the policy change experienced a relative reduction in population growth over the following decade. The majority of the effect occurs at a lag of seven to ten years and is most pronounced among young individuals and low-education groups. Such population adjustments should influence the interpretation of evidence in the growing literature on import competition and local labor markets.	Andrew Greenland, John Lopresti, Peter McHenry
8	2020	Import Competition and Gender Differences in Labor Reallocation ↗ [Title only] This title strongly suggests an application of the China shock trade shock literature, a core empirical domain of the researcher's project. It likely employs shift-share or Bartik-style instruments to analyze import competition, aligning with the methodological and empirical axes of interest. No abstract available.	Hani Mansour, Pamela Medina, Andrea Velásquez
8	2020	U.S. Robots and Their Impacts in the Tropics: Evidence from Colombian Labor Markets ↗ This paper directly extends the automation literature by applying a shift-share logic where U.S. robot adoption serves as the exogenous 'shift' affecting Colombian labor markets. It addresses the methodological concern of cross-country spillovers in shift-share designs and provides empirical evidence on how technology shocks in advanced economies impact developing markets via trade channels. Previous studies for developed countries show negative short-run impacts of automation on employment and earnings. In this paper, we instead examine whether automation by a key trading partner can hurt workers in a developing country. We specifically focus in Colombia’s labor market, and how the automation in the U.S. impacts Colombian workers by replacing exports from Colombia for cheaper robot-made U.S. products. We use employer-employee matched data from the Colombian social security records combined with data on U.S. exposure to robots in different sectors from 2011 to 2016 to examine if robots in the U.S. are displacing workers in Colombia. We find that U.S. robots decrease employment...	Adriana D. Kugler, Maurice Kügler, Laura Ripani, et al.
8	2019	Does Automation Lead to De-Industrialization in Emerging Economies? - Evidence from Brazil ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share instrumental variable design to analyze robot adoption in Brazil, fitting squarely within the automation and trade shock empirical applications of the project. It utilizes industry-level robot stocks weighted by local employment composition and addresses identification issues common to Bartik instruments, such as endogeneity, by employing foreign automation as an instrument. This paper investigates several channels through which automation affects an emerging economy. Building on a Ricardian model of trade with sectoral linkages and a two-stage production technology, in which robots replace labor in certain tasks, it is shown that domestic and foreign automation have differential effects on labor markets. Based on this model, the impact of automation on local labor markets in Brazil are estimated using a shift-share approach. Local labor market exposures to industry-level stocks of robots are derived from their initial industry-employment composition. Foreign automation is found to decrease manufacturing employment through the channel of final goods exports...	Henry Stemmler
8	2011	Low-Skilled Immigrants and the U.S. Labor Market ↗ This paper directly addresses the immigration pillar of the project by synthesizing evidence on the labor market impacts of low-skilled immigrants, a key empirical application of shift-share IV designs. It provides crucial context for the debate surrounding the exclusion restriction and the magnitude of native worker effects estimated in seminal studies like Card (2001). Over the last several decades, two of the most significant developments in the U.S. labor market have been: (1) rising inequality, and (2) growth in both the size and the diversity of immigration flows. Because a large share of new immigrants arrive with very low levels of schooling, English proficiency, and other skills that have become increasingly important determinants of success in the U.S. labor market, an obvious concern is that such immigrants are a poor fit for the restructured American economy. In this chapter, we evaluate this concern by discussing evidence for the United States on three relevant topics: the labor market integration of immigrants, the socioeconomic attainment of...	Brian Duncan, Stephen J. Trejo
8	2019	Opening the Floodgates: Industry and Occupation Adjustments to Labor Immigration This paper is closely related to the immigration axis of the project, as it examines the labor market impacts of immigration shocks using an instrumental variable that isolates supply-side variation based on occupational language barriers. It complements the shift-share literature by providing a structural framework and general equilibrium analysis of how immigration affects industry growth and wages, aligning with the project's interest in distinguishing local effects from broader equilibrium outcomes. This paper investigates the impact of a large shock to labor supply from immigration on occupational wages, labor costs and industry growth. We develop a simple factor-proportions theory where individuals sort into occupations, and industries use occupations with different factor intensities. The model delivers an empirical framework and testable hypotheses that we confront with a rich data set on industry performance, occupational characteristics and immigration. We apply the methodology to one of the largest labor immigration shocks of the 21th century: The immigration wave to Norway after the Eastern enlargement of the European Union. We introduce a novel instrument that exploits the...	Bernt Bratsberg, Andreas Moxnes, Oddbjørn Raaum, et al.
8	2019	Automation and occupational wage trends ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis of the project by examining routine-biased technological change and the task-based model underlying occupational exposure to automation. It provides relevant empirical context on how institutional factors interact with routine task intensity, a core mechanism in the automation and polarization literature discussed in the research. Routine-biased technological change has emerged as a leading explanation for the differential wage growth of routine occupations, such as manufacturers or office clerks, relative to less routine occupations. Less clear, however, is how the effects of technological advancement on occupational wage trends vary across political-institutional context. This paper investigates the extent to which collective bargaining agreements and union coverage shape the relative wage growth of automatable occupations. Using data from the Luxembourg Income Study and the United States Current Population Survey, I measure the ‘routine task intensity’ of occupations across 15 OECD Member States and the 50 United...	Parolin, Zachary
8	2024	Is There a Bright Side to the China Syndrome? Rising Export Opportunities and Life Satisfaction in China ↗ This paper directly applies a shift-share instrumental variable design to analyze the local labor market effects of export growth, mirroring the methodological structure of the China shock literature but focusing on export exposure rather than import competition. It provides relevant empirical context on the non-wage outcomes and heterogeneous effects of trade shocks, which complements the project's focus on the broader impacts of shift-share instruments in empirical economics. Abstract Export growth affects individuals through numerous and contradictory channels. In China, the development of exports has promoted economic development and income growth, but it has also disrupted social structures and work environments. This paper explores the overall effect of exports on perceived well-being by combining responses from a large longitudinal survey covering over 45,000 Chinese with a shift-share measure of local export opportunities. Results show that individuals’ perceived life satisfaction increases significantly in prefectures that benefited from greater export opportunities, despite a negative effect on self-reported health. The positive well-being gains go...	Matthieu Crozet, Laura Hering, Sandra Poncet
8	2024	Labour Market Effects of Trade in a Small Open Economy ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share trade shock methodology to a new geographic context, replicating the core empirical strategy of the China shock literature in a small open economy. It provides relevant comparative evidence on labor market responses to import competition, complementing existing findings on the effects of trade integration. Austria is a small open economy that in the last decades underwent two different waves of increasing trade integration: one with Eastern Europe and one with China. Drawing on trade theory, this paper studies the effects of increases in trade with China and Eastern Europe on labour market dynamics in Austrian NUTS-4 regions for two ten-year periods between 1995 and 2015. Given the limited data available, the current analysis could not identify significant effects on aggregate labour dynamics neither for rising imports from Eastern Europe or China, nor for rising exports to Eastern Europe. However, there is weak evidence that exports to China have facilitated employment growth, especially in...	Agnes Kügler, Klaus S. Friesenbichler, Cornelius Hirsch
8	2019	Dancing with dragons: Chinese import penetration and the performances of manufacturing firms in South Africa ↗ This paper is closely related as it applies a shift-share instrumental variable design to estimate the causal effects of Chinese import shocks on firm-level outcomes, directly extending the China shock literature beyond the US and Europe. It utilizes a foreign-shift variant of the Bartik instrument to identify local supply shocks, aligning with the methodological and empirical axes of the project's trade shock focus. Using firm-level tax administrative data from 2010 to 2017, we study the impact of Chinese import penetration on the performances of manufacturing firms in South Africa, and whether firms investing in capabilities development are more resilient to such competitive pressure. Specifically, by instrumenting Chinese import penetration with China’s share in other low- and middle-income countries’ imports, we first explore whether Chinese import exposure— both direct (e.g. affecting the sector in which the firm itself operates) and indirect (e.g. through input–output linkages along the domestic value chain)—have been associated with firms downsizing in terms of decreasing employment and sales...	Sofia Torreggiani, Antonio Andreoni
8	2022	Product Scope Adjustment to the China Shock: Competition at Home and Abroad ↗ This paper directly engages with the China shock literature by examining firm-level responses to import competition and export competition, extending the typical focus on labor markets to product scope adjustments. It provides valuable empirical context on the mechanisms of creative destruction and resource reallocation driven by trade shocks, which complements the project's interest in firm dynamics and the broader implications of shift-share type trade exposure analyses. This paper investigates the plant-level product scope adjustment to rising import penetration at home and to growing export competition abroad, both of which have been originating from the China trade shock. Using Korean plant-level datasets with detailed product shipment and export information between 2006 and 2018, we uncover an under-explored channel such that export competition in foreign markets, in addition to import penetration in the domestic market, contracts a product scope of plants. Particularly, the product churning effects are observed only for exporting plants. We further dissect the contraction in product scope for exporters and find that: (i) export competition dampens the...	Jaerim Choi, Seong-In Hong, Jung Hur, et al.
8	2021	Effects of Trade and Technology on the Mexican Labor Market ↗ This paper applies the shift-share methodology to analyze the labor market impacts of both trade exposure (NAFTA and Chinese competition) and technology (automation) in Mexico, directly mirroring the core empirical applications of the project. It provides valuable comparative evidence on how these distinct shift-share instruments affect employment, wages, and polarization, offering relevant context for the theoretical and empirical axes of the research. El documento evalúa los efectos del comercio y el cambio tecnológico sobre el mercado laboral de México entre 1994 y 2019. Se analizan las implicaciones de la exposición de los mercados laborales locales a una mayor integración comercial bajo el TLCAN y a una mayor competencia de China en el mercado estadounidense, así como las consecuencias de la exposición de estos mercados a la automatización. Los resultados principales muestran que la integración comercial bajo el TLCAN detonó el empleo en México para todos los grupos demográficos, especialmente para las mujeres y los de menor escolaridad. También se encuentra que la integración comercial redujo el desempleo y la tasa de no...	Gabriela López Noria
8	2022	Economic Insecurity Increases Polarization and Decreases Trust ↗ The paper utilizes the China import shock as a source of exogenous variation to identify the causal effects of economic insecurity, directly engaging with the trade shock applications of shift-share designs. It also addresses the political polarization outcomes highlighted in the project's empirical scope, making it closely relevant to the methodological and thematic axes. Rising political polarization and public distrust are believed to erode democratic norms and institutions, and known to be correlated with worrisome social, economic, and political conditions. However, the causes of polarization and distrust are not well understood, and subject to competing hypotheses. In this article, we test empirical support for one such hypothesis linking increasing polarization to economic insecurity. Under this hypothesis, economic insecurity is expected to increase individual risk aversion leading to a decrease in out-group interactions and therefore to rising polarization within a society. We empirically test predictions of this model globally at the country and...	Vishali Sairam, Vincent Heddesheimer, Joanna J. Bryson
8	2022	Government Contracting, Labor Intensity, and the Local Effects of Fiscal Consolidation: Evidence from the Budget Control Act of 2011 ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share instrumental variable framework to estimate the local effects of fiscal consolidation, aligning closely with the project's empirical axis on fiscal policy and government spending. By using industry-level spending cuts as exogenous shifts and local industry composition as shares, it mirrors the methodological structure of key papers like Nakamura & Steinsson (2014) studied in the project. The U.S. federal government awards billions of dollars of contracts annually to private-sector  rms to produce a wide range of goods and services. However, little is known about how a reduction in federal procurement, also referred to as  scal consolidation, impacts local labor markets. In this paper, we leverage the institutional details of the Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA) and highly detailed transaction-level data for procurement by all federal agencies to estimate the e  ect of  scal consolidation on local employment and wages. Our identi  cation strategy uses a shift-share instrument and is based on the exogeneity of the BCA-induced spending cuts across industries, i.e...	Timothy M. Komarek, Kyle Butts, Gary A. Wagner
8	2021	The asymmetric government spending multipliers: Evidence from US regions ↗ This paper directly addresses the fiscal policy application of shift-share designs by estimating government spending multipliers using US regional data, a core topic in the project's empirical applications axis. It builds upon the methodological foundation established by Nakamura and Steinsson (2014), who utilized military spending as an instrument to identify local supply shocks, thereby providing relevant empirical context and extensions to the Bartik instrument framework. This paper tests the asymmetry in government spending multipliers using the panel data in the US postwar states. Empirical results show that output and employment rate respond asymmetrically to military procurement spending shocks with different signs and magnitudes. Our findings suggest that expansionary multipliers are much larger than contractionary multipliers, and that small-scale spending shocks tend to have a greater impact than large-scale ones.	Jiajun Lu, Yueteng Zhu
8	2024	Automation, techies, and labor market restructuring ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation and labor market restructuring themes central to the project's theoretical and empirical axes, specifically focusing on occupational upgrading and the role of technology shocks. It provides relevant empirical evidence on how automation impacts employment shares across skill groups, complementing the task-based model framework discussed in the project description. While job polarization was a salient feature in European economies in the decade up to 2010, this phenomenon has all but disappeared, except in a handful of Southern-European economies. The decade following 2010 is characterized by occupational upgrading, where low-paid jobs shrink and high paid jobs expand. We show that this is associated with automation: employment shares in low paid, highly automatable jobs shrinks, while employment shares of better paid jobs that are unlikely to be automated expands. Techies (engineers and technicians with strong STEM skills) help explain cross country variation in occupational upgrading: economies that are abundant in techies or exhibit high growth of...	Ariell Reshef, Farid Toubal
8	2016	Wage Shocks and the Technological Substitution of Low-Wage Jobs ↗ [Title only] This title strongly suggests an analysis of how technology substitutes labor, which is central to the task-based model and automation literature reviewed in the project. It likely aligns with the theoretical axis concerning technological substitution and the empirical axis on robot adoption or wage dynamics, fitting the core interest in technology-driven labor market shifts. No abstract available.	Daniel Aaronson, Brian J. Phelan
8	2019	Robots, Labor Markets, and Family Behavior ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) instrumental variable design to the automation literature by using regional industry specialization and national robot adoption growth to estimate the local labor market effects of robots. It aligns closely with the project's empirical applications axis, specifically extending the analysis of robot adoption beyond traditional wage and employment outcomes to demographic behaviors like marriage and fertility. Robots have radically changed the demand for skills and the role of workers in production at an unprecedented pace, with little scope for human capital adjustments. This has affected the job stability and the economic perspectives of large parts of the population in all industrialized countries. Recent evidence on the US labor market has shown negative effects of robots on employment and wages. In this study, we examine how exposure to robots and its consequences on job stability and economic uncertainty have affected individual demographic behavior. To establish this relationship, we use data from the American Community Survey and the International Federation of Robotics and we adopt an...	Massimo Anelli, Osea Giuntella, Luca Stella
8	2025	The Labor Market Impact of Artificial Intelligence: Evidence from US Regions ↗ [Title only] This paper likely applies a shift-share or similar exposure design to estimate the local labor market effects of AI, directly aligning with the project's theoretical axis on new technology task-exposure measures and empirical applications. It bridges the gap between the established automation literature (robots) and emerging AI-related productivity shocks, which is a key frontier in the researcher's scope. No abstract available.	Yueling Huang
8	2024	Housing prices and import competition ↗ This paper is closely related as it applies the core shift-share methodology to a novel outcome (housing prices) within the China shock/NAFTA trade shock literature. It directly addresses the project's empirical applications axis by examining local labor market effects extended to real estate markets via weakened demand channels. This paper examines the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on U.S. housing markets by exploiting regional variation in exposure to Mexican import competition. Using a newly constructed vulnerability index based on pre‐NAFTA industrial composition and Mexico's revealed comparative advantage, we implement an event‐study and difference‐in‐differences specifications across U.S. Public Use Microdata Areas (PUMAs) from 1989 to 2007. We find that regions more exposed to NAFTA‐induced import competition experienced significant and persistent declines in housing prices. Specifically, a one‐unit increase in trade vulnerability, corresponding to roughly a two‐standard‐deviation...	Sheida Teimouri, Joachim Zietz
8	2025	The decline of manufacturing employment and the rise of the far-right in Austria ↗ This paper applies the shift-share logic to analyze how trade and automation shocks, akin to those in the China shock and robot literature, drove political polarization in Austria. It directly addresses the empirical application of labor market shocks on political outcomes, a key theme within the project's scope. In recent decades, right-wing populist parties have experienced increased electoral success in many Western democracies. This rise of the far-right, which is strongly built on the support of the working class, coincides with a sharp decline of the manufacturing sector. This paper analyzes the contribution of this manufacturing decline to the rise of the Austrian far-right. Overall, the decline in manufacturing employment has strongly contributed to this rightward shift in the political landscape, with the manufacturing decline explaining around one-third of the observed increase in far-right vote-shares between 1995 and 2019. Regarding the influences of the forces underlying the...	Karim Bekhtiar
8	2023	Financial Investment and Shrinking Employment: A New Approach ↗ This paper directly engages with the methodological discourse on shift-share instruments by employing Bartik-like instruments and conducting a Rotemberg weights decomposition, a key diagnostic discussed in the project's methodological axis. It provides a novel empirical application of these techniques in a firm-level context, illustrating how the shares-based identification framework can be tested and interpreted in settings outside the traditional labor market or trade shock domains. We develop a theoretical and an empirical framework to demonstrate the detrimental impact of financial investment on the employment growth of Non-Financial Corporates (NFCs), using two forms of Bartik-like instrument. Our analysis, which utilizes China firm-level panel data, reveals that a 1 percent increase in financial investment is correlated with a decrease of approximately 0.04 percent in employment growth. This effect is notably stronger among firms of large size and employees holding master’s or doctoral degrees. Decomposition analysis with Rotemberg weights uncovers that the instrument’s identifying variation is strongly correlated with the Education industry.	Yongzhe Wang, Recardo Hwing
8	2023	Skill-Biased Imports, Skill Acquisition, and Migration ↗ [Title only] The title suggests a direct engagement with trade shock mechanisms similar to those in the China shock literature, likely employing shift-share instruments to analyze how import competition influences skill acquisition and migration patterns. This aligns closely with the project's focus on trade shocks and their local labor market effects, although the specific integration with Bartik methodology is inferred rather than explicit. No abstract available.	Jingting Fan, Lei Li
8	2023	How Much Should We Trust Regional-Exposure Designs? ↗ This paper directly addresses the inference challenges inherent in regional-exposure (shift-share) designs, focusing on cross-regional residual correlations induced by aggregate shocks. It provides critical methodological contributions regarding standard errors and testing precision that are essential for the robust application of these instrumental variable strategies in empirical economics. Many prominent studies in macroeconomics, labor, and trade use panel data on regions to identify the local effects of aggregate shocks.These studies construct regional-exposure instruments as an observed aggregate shock times an observed regional exposure to that shock.We argue that the most economically plausible source of identification in these settings is uncorrelatedness of observed and unobserved aggregate shocks.Even when the regression estimator is consistent, we show that inference is complicated by cross-regional residual correlations induced by unobserved aggregate shocks.We suggest two-way clustering, two-way heteroskedasticity-and autocorrelation-consistent standard errors, and...	Jeremy Majerovitz, Karthik Sastry
8	2024	Closing Ranks: Organized Labor and Immigration ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) instrumental variable methodology to the immigration domain, a core empirical application of the researcher's project. It utilizes the specific mechanism of using immigration-induced labor supply shocks to identify causal effects, aligning closely with the methodological and empirical axes of the study. <p><span>This paper shows that immigration fostered the emergence of American organized labor. I digitize archival records to assemble the first county-level dataset on historical U.S. unionization and use a shift-share instrument to isolate plausibly exogenous labor supply shocks induced by immigration, between 1900 and 1920. Counties with higher immigration experienced increases in union presence and membership. These effects were more pronounced among skilled workers, particularly in counties more exposed to immigrant labor competition, and in areas with more negative attitudes toward immigrants. The evidence is consistent with existing workers unionizing in response to immigration...	Carlo Medici
8	2025	Winners and losers when firms robotize: wage effects across occupations and education ↗ This paper closely relates to the project's automation axis by empirically examining the wage effects of robot adoption using high-quality employer-employee data. It provides granular evidence on task substitution and labor market polarization, which are central mechanisms in the theoretical and empirical frameworks of the shift-share design for automation shocks. Abstract This paper analyses the impact of robots on workers' wages in the manufacturing sector, with a particular focus on relative wages for workers with different levels of education and in different occupations. Using high‐quality matched employer–employee register data with firm‐level information on the introduction of industrial robots, we identify the effects of robotization on relative wages within firms. Skilled blue‐collar workers with a vocational degree experience a decline in wages when firms introduce robots, while there are only small effects for the other groups of workers. These results suggest that robots are substitutes for tasks undertaken by skilled blue‐collar workers...	Erling Barth, Marianne Røed, Pål Schøne, et al.
8	2025	The health cost of industrial automation: evidence from Chinese migrant workers ↗ [Title only] This paper directly addresses the automation axis of the project by examining the health outcomes of industrial robot adoption among Chinese migrant workers. It aligns with the task-based model framework and contributes to the literature on the distributional and non-labor-market consequences of technological shocks, which is a core empirical application of the shift-share design. No abstract available.	Min Zhang
8	2023	The impact of trade liberalisation on the gender wage gap in urban China: The role of sectoral switching costs ↗ This paper directly employs the local labor market shift-share design to analyze trade exposure effects, aligning closely with the China shock literature and the methodological focus of the project. It extends the core theme by incorporating gender-specific switching costs into the analysis of labor reallocation, providing relevant context on distributional impacts within the trade shock framework. Abstract The effect of trade liberalisation on the welfare of workers depends on the nature and magnitude of switching costs that workers face in moving across sectors. This paper investigates the impact of trade liberalisation on the gender wage gap in China, emphasising the role of sectoral switching costs in driving the effect. Using the local labour market approach as the identification strategy, I find that a one-standard-deviation increase in regional trade exposure is associated with a 3.2% increase in the gender wage gap during the 1992–2009 period. The emergence of the empirical pattern is mainly because the sectoral switching costs are larger for females than males. Since trade...	Huiyuan Sun
8	2023	When Women’s Work Disappears: Marriage and Fertility Decisions in Peru ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) instrumental variable design using China import exposure to analyze the local labor market effects of trade shocks, a core component of the project. It contributes to the trade shock literature by extending the analysis beyond standard employment and wage outcomes to include gendered demographic and marriage decisions in Peru. Abstract This paper studies the gendered labor market and demographic effects of trade liberalization in Peru. To identify these effects, we use variation in the exposure of local labor markets to import competition from China based on their baseline industrial composition. On average, the increase in Chinese imports during 1998–2008 led to a persistent decline in the employment share of low-educated female workers but had smaller and transitory effects on the employment of low-educated men. In contrast to the predictions of Becker’s model of household specialization, we find that the increase in import competition during this period increased the share of single low-educated people and...	Hani Mansour, Pamela Medina, Andrea Velásquez
8	2019	Deskilling among Manufacturing Production Workers ↗ This paper directly supports the theoretical axis by providing historical evidence that technological change led to deskilling and polarization of labor demand in manufacturing, a key mechanism underlying occupation-level shift-share designs. It contextualizes the task-based model by showing how capital-intensive methods reduced demand for skilled production workers, aligning with the project's focus on automation and task content. Although four out of five manufacturing employees work in production occupations in most countries (as opposed to white collar occupations), there is little international evidence on how the transition to more capital intensive production methods has affected the demand for different groups of manufacturing production workers. In this article, I use new occupational wage and employment data to document a global decline in the relative demand for skilled production workers in manufacturing since the 1950s. They tended to work in craftsman occupations, and commanded wages even rivaling those of some white collar workers. However, the demand for manufacturing craftsmen decreased in countries...	David Kunst
8	2022	The Geography of Job Tasks ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis of the project by developing granular, text-based measures of job tasks and worker specialization across different geographic areas. It provides essential measurement tools for understanding how task content and technology requirements vary locally, which is foundational for constructing and interpreting occupation-level exposure indices in shift-share designs. We introduce new measurement tools to understand the sources of earnings differences across space. Based on the natural language employers use in job vacancy text, we develop granular measures of job tasks and of worker specialization. We find that jobs in larger commuting zones involve greater interpersonal interactions and have higher computer software requirements. Between 10 and 50 percent of task and technology variation between large and small commuting zones exists within occupations. Further, workers in larger markets are more specialized within occupations. Tasks, technologies, and worker specialization account for a substantial portion of the market size premium even within...	Enghin Atalay, Sebastian Sotelo, Daniel Tannenbaum
8	2025	Elasticity of substitution between robots and workers: Theory and evidence from Japanese robot price data ↗ This paper is closely related as it directly addresses the automation domain and robot adoption effects on wages, extending the Acemoglu & Restrepo framework. It utilizes a shift-share-like instrument based on Japanese robot price shocks to identify causal effects, contributing to the methodological and empirical discussions on robot exposure instruments. This paper examines the wage effects of the increased use of industrial robots, focusing on their role in specific tasks and international trade. I construct a novel dataset by tracking shocks to the cost of acquiring robots from Japan, termed the Japan Robot Shock (JRS), and analyze these shocks across different occupations that have adopted robots. A general equilibrium model incorporating robot automation in a large open economy is developed, and a model-implied optimal instrumental variable of the JRS is constructed to address the identification challenges posed by the correlation between automation shocks and the JRS. The study finds that the elasticity of substitution (EoS) between...	Daisuke Adachi
8	2022	Artificial Intelligence, Robots and Unemployment: Evidence from OECD Countries ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation/robots empirical application and the theoretical task-based model by examining the labor market effects of industrial robots and AI. It provides cross-country evidence on unemployment and polarization effects, which are central themes in the researcher's project regarding robot adoption and task exposure measures. Investigating the relation between artificial intelligence, robots and unemployment on a panel of 33 OECD countries covering the 2005—2017 period, we find that a 10% increase in the stock of industrial robots is associated with a 0.42 point increase in the unemployment rate. For artificial intelligence (AI), we use patents as a proxy of AI-related technological capabilities and find a positive correlation with the aggregated unemployment rate, albeit statistically weaker than the one found for robots. We then run the regressions on unemployment rates differentiated by education and age, and observe highly heterogeneous effects between groups. For example, the effect of robots is 2.5 times...	Florent Bordot
8	2024	Tasks, wages and new technologies ↗ This paper directly engages with the task-based model framework underpinning the project's theoretical axis, analyzing how specific technologies like robots and AI differentially impact wages via routine and non-routine tasks. It provides relevant empirical evidence on the heterogeneous returns to task content, which is central to understanding the mechanisms behind occupation-level exposure indices discussed in the project description. Abstract This paper addresses the role of technology in shaping worker‐level task prices, exploiting within‐occupation variation using a unique survey linked to administrative data for over 180,000 Dutch workers between 2014 and 2020. Nonroutine abstract and interactive tasks are related to wage premia, and routine tasks to wage penalties. However, these task returns vary according to exposure to the types of (new) technology, such as computers, robots and artificial intelligence. Overall, wages are higher in technology‐intensive industries, but newer technologies target non‐routine tasks differently. This may have profound implications for the nonroutine wage premium given the rise of...	Femke Cnossen
8	2012	Low-Skilled Immigrants and the US Labor Market ↗ This paper is closely related as it directly addresses the immigration application of shift-share instruments, specifically estimating the impact of immigration on native wages and employment. It provides key empirical context for the Card (2001) enclave instrument literature, which is a central pillar of the researcher's project. Abstract This article discusses the labor market integration of immigrants, the socioeconomic attainment of the U.S.-born descendants of immigrants, and the impact of immigration on the wages and employment opportunities of native workers. Using pooled cross-sectional data on men from the American Community Survey and the Current Population Survey, it shows that the employment rates of low-skilled adult immigrants are very high (> 90 percent). Immigrants' wages, however, are low relative to native men of comparable education. The longer immigrants stay in the country, the smaller the earnings gap is, particularly if their English proficiency is high. Comparison of second-generation and...	Brian Duncan, Stephen J. Trejo
8	2017	The Decline of Manufacturing in the U.S. Economy: Impacts of China's Trade Shockk, Trump's Protectionist Tariffs, and the Drivers of Manufacturing Job Losses (Presentation Slides) ↗ This presentation directly addresses the 'China shock' literature, a core empirical application of the shift-share design, by analyzing the localized labor market impacts of import competition. It engages with key mechanisms central to the project, including the debate on whether trade shocks or automation drive manufacturing job losses and the resulting political polarization effects. The long-term declining role of manufacturing in the U.S. economy – reflecting a shift of the economy after World War II to a post-industrial orientation with an increased emphasis on services – was accelerated by the effects on manufacturing jobs and trade deficits of President Reagan’s budget deficits in the 1980s and China’s recent trade penetration. Similarities of Reagan’s policies to President Trump’s proposed protectionist tariffs and the cross-border corporate tax reform advocated by House Republicans in February 2017 suggest a possible partial reversal of the long-term job decline, but the ensuing major dislocations in jobs are unlikely to lead to a net increase in manufacturing...	Serge L. Wind
8	2017	The People's Republic of China's Import Competition and Skill Demand in Japanese Manufacturing ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share design to the China shock literature, examining how import competition affects skill demand in Japanese manufacturing. It aligns closely with the project's focus on trade shocks and the task-based model underlying automation and polarization effects. We examine the hypothesis that manufacturing industries in Japan that have been exposed to import competition from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) experience greater skill upgrading (increased demand for skilled workers). Using an industry panel dataset over the period 1980–2010, we exploit variations of worker skill categories by occupation, paired with detailed information and communication technology investment data in the employment share regression. We find that while the PRC’s comparative advantages in exports have shifted from labor-intensive to more capital-intensive products, this has not resulted in substituting skilled workers in Japanese manufacturing. Rather, it has had...	Nobuaki Yamashita
8	2021	How Do Workers Adjust When Firms Adopt New Technologies? ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation and technology adoption axis by empirically investigating worker adjustments to digital technologies, a core theme of the project's task-based model. It provides relevant micro-level evidence on how different task compositions (e.g., non-routine analytic) interact with technology shocks, aligning closely with the theoretical and empirical discussions on robot adoption and polarization. IZA DP No. 14626 AUGUST 2021 How Do Workers Adjust When Firms Adopt New Technologies? We investigate how workers adjust to firms’ investments into new digital technologies, including artificial intelligence, augmented reality, or 3D printing. For this, we collected novel data that links survey information on firms’ technology adoption to administrative social security data. We then compare individual outcomes between workers employed at technology adopters relative to non-adopters. Depending on the type of technology, we find evidence for improved employment stability, higher wage growth, and increased cumulative earnings in response to digital technology adoption. These beneficial...	Sabrina Genz, Terry Gregory, Markus Janser, et al.
8	2024	The China Shock, Market Concentration and the U.S. Phillips Curve ↗ [Title only] This paper directly addresses the China shock literature by linking import competition to macroeconomic outcomes like market concentration and the Phillips Curve, extending the core micro-to-macro narrative. It likely utilizes shift-share style instruments or related trade exposure metrics to identify causal effects, fitting squarely within the trade shock and general equilibrium implications axis of the project. No abstract available.	Melih Firat
8	2023	Monopsony and Automation ↗ This paper is closely related as it extends the task-based model underlying the automation literature by integrating labor market monopsony into the mechanism of robot adoption. It provides key empirical evidence on how local labor market power interacts with technology shocks, a critical nuance in interpreting the effects of shift-share instruments in the automation domain. We examine the impact of labor market power on ﬁrms’ adoption of automation technologies. We develop a model that incorporates labor market power into the task-based theory of automation. We show that, due to higher marginal cost of labor, monopsonistic ﬁrms have stronger incentives to automate than wage-taking ﬁrms, which could amplify or mitigate the negative employment effects of automation. Using data from US commuting zones, our results show that commuting zones that are more exposed to industrial robots exhibit considerably larger reductions in both employment and wages when their labor markets demonstrate higher levels of concentration.	José Azar, Marina Chugunova, Klaus Keller, et al.
8	2021	Immigration and Regional Specialization in Ai ↗ The paper directly applies the shift-share design framework to measure regional exposure to AI-related occupational growth, utilizing immigration inflows as the shift component and local industry composition as the share component. This aligns closely with the project's focus on Bartik instruments for automation and immigration, extending the task-based model context to modern AI capabilities. I examine the specialization of US commuting zones in AI-related occupations over the 2000 to 2018 period. I define AI-related jobs based on keywords in Census occupational titles. Using the approach in Lin (2011) to identify new work, I measure job growth related to AI by weighting employment growth in AI-related occupations by the share of job titles in these occupations that were added after 1990. Overall, regional specialization in AI-related activities mirrors that of regional specialization in IT. However, foreign-born and native-born workers within the sector tend to cluster in different locations. Whereas specialization of the foreign-born in AI-related jobs is strongest in...	Gordon Hanson
8	2017	Structural Transformation and the Rise of Information Technology ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis by developing an occupation-level IT intensity index that functions similarly to the task-based exposure measures discussed in the project, such as RTI or automation exposure. It provides empirical evidence on how technology shocks differentially affect occupations, which is central to the task-based model underlying many shift-share applications in the automation literature. Has the emergence of information technology changed the structure of employment and earnings in the US? We propose a new index of occupation-level IT intensity and document several long-term changes in the occupational landscape over the past decades. Using Census and US KLEMS micro-data, we show that: (i) the bulk of productivity growth after 1950 is concentrated in IT intensive sectors; (ii) the share of workers in IT jobs has expanded significantly, with little or no pause and IT jobs enjoy a large and growing earnings premium, even after controlling for general task requirements (e.g., cognitive, non-routine); and (iii) the rise of the IT intensive employment share is closely associated...	Giovanni Gallipoli, Christos Makridis
8	2023	Trading Places: Mobility Responses of Native and Foreign-Born Adults to the China Trade Shock ↗ This paper directly engages with the China shock literature by examining the mobility responses of native and foreign-born workers to import competition, a key application of shift-share instruments. It contributes to the understanding of labor market adjustments and the role of immigration, which connects to both the trade shock and immigration axes of the research project. Previous research finds that the greater geographic mobility of foreign than native-born workers following economic shocks helps to facilitate local labor market adjustment to shifting regional economic conditions. We examine the role that immigration may have played in enabling U.S. commuting zones to respond to manufacturing job loss caused by import competition from China. Although population headcounts of the foreign-born fell by more than those of the native-born in regions exposed to the China trade shock, the overall contribution of immigration to labor market adjustment in this episode was small. Because most U.S. immigrants arrived in the country after manufacturing regions were...	David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon Hanson
8	2023	The China trade shock and the European Union's employment ↗ This paper is closely related as it investigates the impact of the China trade shock on employment, a core empirical application of the project's trade shock axis. It provides valuable context by extending the analysis to the European Union and highlighting the critical role of third-market competition channels within the shift-share framework. This paper analyzes the effect of trade with China on the European Union's industrial and regional employment. Built on a canonical multi-country Ricardian model, we identify and estimate the employment reallocation effect across fifteen EU countries with specific discussions on three channels: import penetration, direct export, and third-market competition vis-à-vis China. Data suggest that the adverse effects stemming from the import penetration and the third-market competition quantitatively dominate the positive effect from the export channel for the effect on the EU. In particular, the third-market competition channel is a key channel for understanding the impact of China trade shock...	Mi Dai, Qingyuan Du, Yalin Liu, et al.
8	2024	The effect of regional import shocks on job flows in Japanese manufacturing establishments ↗ This paper directly addresses the trade shock application of the shift-share design by examining the establishment-level effects of import competition in Japan. It extends the core China shock literature by utilizing granular data to analyze job flows and firm dynamics, providing empirical context to the labor market adjustment mechanisms central to the researcher's project. • This study examines the impact of the China shock on the job flows of establishments. • A dataset of all Japanese manufacturing establishments from 2006 to 2016 is used. • Industry-level imports increased the probability of exit in only a few groups. • Some small establishments used a hibernation strategy to cope with regional imports. • Imports accelerated job creation and destruction in some surviving establishments. Using a dataset of all Japanese manufacturing establishments in 2006 and 2016 and industry- and region-level import shocks, this study examined the impact of the China Shock on the job flows of establishments. Regression analyses found that the industry-level import shock...	Masahiro Endoh
8	2025	China Syndrome and Local Labor Markets: Sectoral Reallocation and Job Quality ↗ This paper applies the core shift-share methodology to analyze the local labor market impacts of the China shock, focusing on sectoral reallocation and job quality in South Korea. It directly addresses the empirical applications axis by extending the literature on trade-induced labor market adjustments beyond traditional US contexts. ABSTRACT This paper examines the impact of Chinese import exposure on labour reallocation between the manufacturing and service sectors and its implications for job quality. To conduct this study, we focus on South Korea, an OECD country with the lowest labour productivity in the service sector compared to manufacturing. Our findings reveal that Chinese imports have led to employment shifts from manufacturing to the service sector within local labour markets. Additionally, exposure to Chinese imported products has decreased employment in non‐routine tasks and increased employment in routine tasks, resulting in a decline in job quality. These results suggest that in countries where the...	Jaehong Choi, Hyunbae Chun, Jung Hur, et al.
8	2025	Reprint of: Regional trade policy uncertainty ↗ This paper directly utilizes a Bartik-style instrument by weighting national sectoral trade policy uncertainty by local industry import shares, fitting the project's core methodological framework. It extends the shift-share application to trade policy uncertainty, addressing key empirical contexts like regional economic effects and potential exclusion restriction issues discussed in the project description. Higher uncertainty about trade policy has recessionary effects on U.S. states. To show this, we first build a novel empirical measure of regional trade policy uncertainty, based on the volatility of national import tariffs at the sectoral level and the sectoral composition of imports in U	Céline Poilly, Fabien Tripier
8	2013	The Good News About Disappearing Jobs: U.S. High School Dropout Rates and Import Exposure ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) design to study the labor market effects of the China shock, a core empirical application of the project. It utilizes regional variation in import exposure to identify human capital outcomes, aligning closely with the trade shock literature and the methodological focus on local partial-equilibrium effects. We exploit regional variation in exposure to Chinese import competition to identify the effect of trade-induced changes in labor market conditions on human capital accumulation in the U.S. from 1990 to 2007. We document large increases in U.S. high school graduation rates in the labor markets most affected by import competition. After controlling for established predictors of high school completion, demographic shifts, and coincident labor market changes unrelated to trade with China, we estimate that a movement from the 25th to the 75th percentile in Chinese import exposure led to an average increase in the graduation rate of 3.64 percentage points. Consistent with an environment in which...	Andrew Greenland, John Lopresti
8	2023	A New Index Measuring Occupational Exposure to Artificial Intelligence ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis of the project by developing a novel occupational AI exposure index using patent-text overlap, a method explicitly mentioned in the project description. It extends the shift-share/Bartik framework to the context of artificial intelligence, providing relevant empirical measures for studying technology shocks on labor markets. A central concern regarding artificial intelligence (AI) is its potential to replace human workers. However, recent research suggests that AI may improve the workers' job prospects through a Turing Transformation process: AI simplifies work, lowers barriers to job entry, and thus broadens job opportunities for more workers. In this paper, we present a conceptual framework that considers the two dimensions of AI's impact on job content and job opportunity , placing the Turing Transformation as a special case. We develop a novel occupational AI exposure measure using a sentence transformer model to compare the semantic similarity between the occupation descriptions and AI patents. We find...	Yuanyang Liu, Chuanren Liu, Tingliang Huang
8	2024	The effect of recent technological change on US immigration policy ↗ This paper directly employs the shift-share methodology using robot adoption as the shift component to analyze the political economy of immigration, fitting the automation and immigration application axes. It also connects to the theoretical task-based model by examining manual-biased technological change, which is central to the project's interest in how technology shocks affect labor market outcomes and related policy responses. Does technological change shape immigration policy in the United States? I argue that if technological change tilts the composition of workers towards manual employment, this leads to a more restrictive immigration policy. A theoretical model and empirical evidence analyzing voting on immigration bills in the House of Representatives supports this. Policy makers representing districts exposed to manual-biased technological change are more likely to support restricting low-skill immigration. Results are confirmed using specific automation technologies: IT capital and industrial robot adoption. The analysis is completed by (i) additional results on trade policy and political polarization...	Björn Brey
8	2025	Knowledge economy, internal migration, and local labour markets ↗ This paper directly employs a shift-share instrumental variable strategy to identify local labor market effects, aligning closely with the methodological focus of the research project. It also addresses key themes such as worker mobility, local spillovers, and the distinction between nominal and real wage outcomes in response to sectoral shocks. The spatial concentration of knowledge-intensive activities can generate multiplicative effects at the local level. This paper investigates how employment growth in knowledge-intensive and tradable sectors affects wage, days worked, and internal migration among non-tradable workers in the local economy. We leverage matched employer-employee social security data for Italy (2005-2019), which enables us to track individual workers across jobs and locations. Our empirical strategy combines a two-step estimation procedure with a shift-share instrument, allowing us to separately identify the roles of worker sorting and local spillovers. We find that the expansion of knowledge-intensive sectors...	Agar Brugiavini, Marco Di Cataldo, Giulia Romani
8	2024	Foreign demand shocks and CO <sub>2</sub> emission intensity: firm-level evidence from China ↗ This paper applies the shift-share (Bartik) instrumental variable design to analyze the impact of foreign demand shocks, directly aligning with the project's methodological focus on the foreign shift variant. It contributes to the trade shocks axis by providing firm-level evidence on how export-oriented growth affects environmental outcomes, a relevant extension of the standard labor market analyses. Constrained by data availability and challenges in causality identification, the relationship between trade and the environment remains theoretically ambiguous. This paper constructs a novel Chinese manufacturing firms' CO2 emission intensity dataset by converting different types of firms' energy consumption. Using disaggregated transaction data and the Shift-Share design, this paper exploits the effects of foreign demand shocks on firms' CO2 emission intensity from 2007 to 2014. We document that a 10% increase in foreign demand leads to a 0.28% reduction in firms' CO2 emission intensity. We find that multi-product exporters can benefit more from foreign demand shocks, and further prove the...	Huimin Xie, Chunding Li
8	2025	Skill-biased imports, skill acquisition, and migration ↗ This paper directly employs a shift-share (Bartik) instrument to analyze the local labor market effects of imported capital goods, aligning with the project's focus on trade shock identification. It further extends the methodology by integrating a spatial equilibrium model to bridge the gap between local partial-equilibrium effects and aggregate general-equilibrium outcomes, a key theoretical concern of the research project. Imported capital goods, which embody skill-complementary technologies, can increase the supply of skills in developing countries. Focusing on China and using a shift-share design, we show that city-level capital goods import growth increases the local skill share and that both skill acquisition and migration play a role. We develop and quantify a spatial equilibrium model with these two mechanisms to examine the aggregate effects of capital goods imports, accounting for trade and migration linkages between cities. Counterfactual experiments suggest that the growth in capital goods imports in China between 2000 and 2010 led to a 3.1–7.3 million increase in the stock of college graduates...	Jingting Fan, Lei Li
8	2019	China Syndrome Redux: New Results on Global Labor Reallocation ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share instrumental variable design to analyze labor market effects in China, mirroring the methodology of the 'China shock' literature it references. It provides crucial foreign-shift evidence for understanding global labor reallocation, a key component of the project's scope on trade shocks and the distinction between local and aggregate effects. Trade between the U.S. and China is widely thought to have contributed significantly to the decline in U.S. manufacturing employment --- sometimes called the China Syndrome. Flipping the point of view, we examine the impact on China of the trade growth between 2000 and 2007: We divide China into prefecture-level cities and construct measures of export exposure based on a city's initial industry specialization and instrument China's export surge using the reduction in trade policy uncertainty. Rising exports do not contribute to any growth of industrial wage or labor productivity on average, but instead channel agricultural, unemployed, and non-participating workers into the industrial labor...	Difei Ouyang, Weidi Yuan
8	2023	Trade Shocks and Credit Reallocation ↗ This paper directly engages with the China shock literature by analyzing the financial amplification mechanisms of trade shocks, a key extension of the core shift-share empirical design. It addresses the aggregate general-equilibrium effects and credit reallocation dynamics that complement the standard partial-equilibrium labor market findings central to the project. This paper identifies a credit-supply contraction that arises endogenously after trade liberalization. Banks with loan portfolios concentrated in sectors exposed to competition from China face an increase in nonperforming loans after China’s entry into the World Trade Organization. As a result, they reduce the supply of credit to firms, irrespective of the firm’s sector of operation. This cut in credit translates into lower employment, investment, and output. Through this mechanism, the financial channel amplifies the shock to firms already hit by import competition from China and passes it on to firms in sectors expected to expand upon trade liberalization. (JEL D22, F14, G21, G31, G32...	Stefano Federico, Fadi Hassan, Veronica Rappoport
8	2023	Robots and Low-Skill Labor ↗ This paper applies the shift-share method to the robotics domain, directly engaging with the Acemoglu and Restrepo framework and the automation literature central to the project. It explores the endogenous response of robot adoption to labor supply shocks, offering a nuanced perspective on the substitution between automation and low-skill labor within the specified empirical context. Changes in the supply of low-skill labor may affect robot adoption by firms. We test this hypothesis by exploiting an increase in the number of low-skill workers induced by exogenous immigration into Danish municipalities. Using the Danish employer-employee matched dataset over the period 1995-2019, we show in a shift-share regression that a larger share of non-Western immigrants in a municipality leads to fewer robot adoptions at the firm-level. We rationalize this finding in a simple model of robot adoption in which robots and low-skill workers are substitutes. As many advanced economies are facing labor shortages, this paper sheds light on the future of robotization.	Katja Mann, Dario Pozzoli
8	2024	Robots as Guardians: Industrial Automation and Workplace Safety in China ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation/robots axis of the project by applying a shift-share IV strategy to estimate the causal effect of robot adoption on workplace safety. It complements the core task-based model and automation literature (e.g., Acemoglu & Restrepo) by extending the analysis to non-labor market outcomes, specifically occupational health and safety. Industrial robots can potentially improve workplace safety by performing hazardous tasks on behalf of workers. This paper examines the impact of industrial robots on workplace safety in China. We find that a one-standard-deviation increase in robot exposure reduces annual workplace accidents and fatalities by 0.100 and 0.0133 cases per thousand population, compared to sample averages of 0.122 accidents and 0.0351 fatalities. These findings are robust to an instrumental variable strategy and various robustness checks. Our analysis of injuries in household surveys and Baidu search activities reinforces these results. Using an accounting framework, we show that the safety improvements do not...	Wei Luo, Lixin Tang, Yaxin Yang, et al.
8	2024	The Decline of Manufacturing Employment and the Rise of the Far-Right in Austria ↗ This paper applies the Bartik-style shift-share framework to analyze the political consequences of manufacturing decline in Austria, directly addressing the core empirical application of trade and automation shocks on societal outcomes. It aligns closely with the project's focus on how local industry composition interacts with national or foreign shifts to predict local treatment intensity, specifically examining the link between labor market dislocation and political polarization. In recent decades right-wing populist parties have experienced increased electoral success in many western democracies. This rise of the far-right, which is strongly built on the support of the working class, coincides with a sharp decline of the manufacturing sector. This paper analyzes the contribution of this manufacturing decline to the rise of the Austrian far-right. Overall the decline in manufacturing employment has strongly contributed to this rightward shift in the political landscape, with the manufacturing decline explaining around 40\% of the observed increase in far-right vote-shares between 1995 and 2017. This effect is entirely driven by increases in natives unemployment...	Karim Bekhtiar
8	2025	The effects of internal migration on manufacturing firms: Evidence from Vietnam ↗ This paper directly employs a shift-share instrumental variable design using international shocks to identify the causal effects of migration, aligning closely with the methodological focus on Bartik instruments and migration applications. It extends the scope by applying this framework to firm-level outcomes and internal migration rather than external migration or labor market aggregates, offering relevant empirical context for the project. We use rich administrative data on all manufacturing firms in Vietnam to estimate the causal effects of internal migration on firm performance. Leveraging population census microdata and a shift-share instrument based on international agricultural price shocks, we provide the first evidence on how migration affects quantity-based total factor productivity (TFPQ), as well as other firm outcomes. In the short run, migration reduces marginal costs, prices, and wages, but has no effect on TFPQ, revenue per worker, or capital intensity, and no lasting effects. Adjustment occurs through new firm entry, particularly by small firms in high-productivity sectors observable in our detailed data.	Steven Bond‐Smith, Toan Nguyen, Dinh Duy Phan
8	2025	Automation and Polarization ↗ [Title only] This title directly references the core themes of automation and labor market polarization, which are central to the task-based model and occupation-level shift-share designs outlined in the project description. It likely discusses the foundational work by Autor, Dorn, and others on how technological change affects routine vs. non-routine tasks, a key theoretical and empirical pillar of the research agenda. No abstract available.	Daron Acemoğlu, Jonas Loebbing
8	2025	Automation, Trade Unions and Atypical Employment ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation domain by examining the labor market effects of industrial robots on atypical employment, a key outcome in the shift-share literature. It aligns with the project's focus on how technology shocks affect specific labor market dimensions, while also exploring institutional moderators like unions that are relevant to the structural interpretation of such shocks. ABSTRACT We study the effect of automation technologies—industrial robots, software and databases—on the incidence of involuntary atypical employment in 13 EU countries between 2006 and 2018. Robots do not affect the total employment rate but significantly increase the involuntary atypical employment share, mainly through fixed‐term work. Software and databases increase total employment and are neutral for atypical employment. Higher trade union density mitigates the robots' impact on atypical employment, while employment protection legislation plays no role. Using historical decompositions, we attribute 1–2 percentage points of a 15% average atypical employment share in our sample to...	Piotr Lewandowski, Wojciech Szymczak
8	2026	Not a Typical Firm: Capital–Labor Substitution and Firms' Labor Shares ↗ This paper directly engages with the automation literature by modeling firm-level heterogeneity in capital-labor substitution, a key mechanism underlying shift-share instruments for robot adoption. It provides important theoretical context for understanding how aggregate labor share declines can coexist with rising labor shares at the median firm, addressing nuances in the structural foundations of the Acemoglu & Restrepo framework. The US labor share has declined, especially in manufacturing and retail. Yet the labor share of a typical firm in these sectors has risen. We introduce a model where firms incur fixed costs to automate tasks. A decline in the price of capital goods used for automation reproduces the observed patterns: large firms automate tasks, reducing the aggregate labor share, while the median firm continues to operate a labor-intensive technology. When calibrating the automation fixed costs to match the observed adoption heterogeneity, the model generates the aggregate and firm-level facts quantitatively in response to lower capital prices, especially in manufacturing. (JEL D21, D33, E25, L60, O32)	Joachim Hubmer, Pascual Restrepo
8	2026	Skill-biased technological change in the age of AI: a theoretical analysis of automation and inequality ↗ [Title only] This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis of the project by analyzing automation and inequality through the lens of skill-biased technological change, a core component of the task-based model. It likely contributes to the discussion on how new technologies like AI differentially affect labor markets, aligning with the project's focus on occupation-level exposure and structural shifts in employment. No abstract available.	Te Li, Hadrian Nichols
8	2018	Work Task Automation and Artificial Intelligence: Implications for the Role of Government ↗ [Title only] The title directly engages with the theoretical axis regarding task-based models and recent AI exposure measures, which are central to the project's scope. It likely discusses the implications of automation for labor markets, aligning with the project's interest in robot adoption and the shift from partial to general equilibrium analysis. No abstract available.	Matej Drev
8	2023	The Decline of Routine Tasks, Education Investments, And Intergenerational Mobility ↗ This paper directly applies the task-based shift-share design to analyze intergenerational mobility, aligning with the theoretical and empirical axes of the project. It leverages differential exposure to routine-task declines to identify local labor demand shocks, a core methodological component of the researcher's focus on shift-share instruments and their applications. How does a large structural change to the labor market affect education investments made at young ages? Exploiting differential exposure to the national decline in routine-task intensity across local labor markets, we show that the secular decline in routine tasks causes major shifts in education investments of high school students, where they invest less in vocational-trades education and increasingly invest in college education. Our results highlight that labor demand changes impact inequality in the next generation. Low-ability and low-SES students are most responsive to task-biased demand changes and, as a result, intergenerational mobility in college education increases.	Patrick Bennett, Kai Liu, Kjell G. Salvanes
8	2024	To Find Relative Earnings Gains after the China Shock, Look Outside Manufacturing and Upstream ↗ This paper directly engages with the China shock literature by examining the heterogeneous effects of import competition on workers both inside and outside the manufacturing sector. It extends the standard shift-share framework by incorporating upstream input market exposures, thereby enriching the understanding of the broader labor market impacts of trade shocks. We find that US workers outside manufacturing exhibit relative earnings increases after US trade liberalization with China. These relative gains cumulate over time as the beneficial effect of a workerâs upstream exposureâincreased competition from China in input marketsâmore than offsets the detrimental impact of her own and downstream (customer) exposures. These relative gains are smaller for non-manufacturing workers with less ex ante firm tenure and lower initial earnings, and are absent among manufacturing workers due to a lack of upstream gains and stronger downstream losses.	Justin R. Pierce, Peter K. Schott, Cristina Tello-Trillo
8	2024	Investing in Health during Good and Bad Times: An Application to the China Shock * ↗ This paper is closely related as it explicitly applies the China shock framework to study the health impacts of trade exposure, a key empirical application within the project's scope. It contributes by modeling the dynamic mechanisms through which labor market shocks affect health, thereby extending the standard partial-equilibrium analysis to include welfare and policy implications regarding health investment. Many economic shocks affect not only workers' wages and employment but also health. We study their mechanism, welfare effects, and policy implications in a dynamic quantitative model with endogenous health investment. The health production technology is flexible, allowing workers to optimally choose to forego or partially treat sickness, or incur non-medical health investment. Applying this model to the China shock, we estimate its causal effects on health and calibrate the model to the pre-China shock economy. Our simulations suggest that, first, the health investment mechanism is economically significant, with the model elasticity accounting for between 40-50% of the empirical estimates...	Soojin Kim, Sunham Kim, Chong Xiang
8	2025	AI occupational exposure and wage distribution: the case of Italy ↗ This paper directly applies the theoretical axis of the project by measuring AI occupational exposure and analyzing its distributional effects, aligning with the task-based model framework. It utilizes the specific empirical context of AI-capability indices (Felten et al.) to study wage polarization, a key theme in the automation and shift-share literature. Questo articolo esamina la relazione tra l’esposizione all’intelligenza artificiale (IA) delle occupazioni e i salari guardando all’intera distribuzione salariale. A partire da un dataset di tipo employer-employee arricchito dalle informazioni derivanti da una survey contenente informazioni dettagliate sulle caratteristiche di ogni singola occupazione, stimiamo un modello di regressione quantilica non condizionata per un campione di lavoratori dipendenti italiani nel periodo 2011-2019. Al fine di verificare l’esistenza di un differenziale salariale attribuibile esclusivamente al tipo di occupazione, definito sulla base di un indicatore di esposizione potenziale che cattura soprattutto la...	Irene Brunetti, Chiara Mussida
8	2025	Just another cog in the machine? A worker‐level view of robotization and tasks ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation/robots empirical application and the task-based model, analyzing how robotization alters individual task composition using industry-level exposure. It aligns closely with the project's theoretical axis on occupation/worker-level exposure indices and the empirical focus on robot adoption effects. Abstract Technological change has led to a decline in the share of routine and physical jobs, and a rise in the share of abstract and social ones at the economy level. However, much less is known about how these trends unfold at the individual level. Do workers' tasks become more or less routine and physical? Do workers shift towards more social and abstract activities? This paper is the first to explore these questions in the context of robotization. We use survey data from 20 European countries to develop worker‐level indices of physical, routine, abstract and social tasks, which we link to industry‐level robotization exposure. Using instrumental variable techniques, we find that...	Milena Nikolova, Anthony Lepinteur, Femke Cnossen
8	2025	The Labor Market Impact of Digital Technologies ↗ This paper applies a shift-share methodology exploiting regional variations in digital technology exposure to estimate local labor market impacts, aligning closely with the project's methodological and empirical axes. It extends the automation literature by distinguishing between specific digital technologies (AI, big data, cloud computing) and their differential effects on gender and education, which fits within the task-based model framework. We investigate the impact of digital technology on employment patterns in Korea, where firms have rapidly adopted digital technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and cloud computing. By exploiting regional variations in technology exposure, we find significant negative effects on female workers, particularly those in non-IT (information technology) services. This contrasts with previous technological disruptions, such as the IT revolution and robotization, which primarily affected male workers in manufacturing. The negative employment effect of AI did not differ across educational groups, but big data and cloud computing more negatively affected workers with less...	Sangmin Aum, Yongseok Shin
8	2025	Analysis of Artificial Intelligence Exposure Across Industries in South Korea and the United States ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis of the project by applying the Felten et al. (2021) AI-capability index to measure industry-level exposure to artificial intelligence. It provides empirical evidence on the labor market effects of this specific type of technology shock, aligning with the discussion on task-based models and new exposure measures. This study examines the impact of AI exposure on industries in South Korea and the United States from 2019 to 2022, using the AI Industry Exposure (AIIE) index developed by Felten et al. (2021). In South Korea, AI exposure is positively associated with employment but negatively associated with real labor income per capita, with labor productivity potentially driving the employment gains. Additionally, an analysis of occupational employment in South Korea confirms a positive correlation with AI exposure. For the U.S., AI exposure shows more pronounced labor market influence than in South Korea.	Yaein Baek, Jiyun Lee
8	2025	Towards the Terminator Economy: Assessing Job Exposure to Ai Through Llms ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical and empirical components of the project by constructing an LLM-based Task Exposure to AI (TEAI) index, which serves as a modern variant of the occupation-level Bartik instrument. It aligns with the task-based model axis by detailing how technology shocks affect specific job tasks and provides relevant empirical evidence on the effects of automation exposure on employment and wages. AI and related technologies are reshaping jobs and tasks, either by automating or augmenting human skills in the workplace. Many researchers have been working on estimating if and to what extent jobs and tasks are exposed to the risk of being automatized by AI-related technologies. Our work tackles this issue through a data-driven approach by: (i) developing a reproducible framework that uses cutting-edge open-source large language models to assess the current capabilities of AI and robotics in performing job-related tasks; (ii) formalizing and computing a measure of AI exposure by occupation, the Task Exposure to AI (TEAI) index, and a measure of Task Replacement by AI (TRAI) index, both...	Emilio Colombo, Fabio Mercorio, Mario Mezzanzanica, et al.
8	2020	Winners and Losers of Immigration ↗ [Title only] This title strongly suggests an empirical analysis of immigration's distributional effects, likely utilizing shift-share instruments or similar compositional methods to identify causal impacts on local labor markets. It aligns directly with the project's core applications in immigration literature and the broader goal of distinguishing winners from losers in response to labor supply shocks. No abstract available.	Davide Fiaschi, Cristina Tealdi
8	2021	Trade, Jobs, and Worker Welfare ↗ The paper directly utilizes a Bartik-type instrument to quantify the local labor market effects of trade shocks, aligning closely with the project's methodological focus on shift-share designs. It contributes to the trade shock literature by extending the analysis to worker welfare and labor mobility dynamics, which are central to the project's empirical applications. This paper introduces a new framework to quantify the effect of international trade on worker's welfare through labor mobility. Our framework features various determinants of labor mobility and identifies how trade shocks impact those determinants endogenously. Focusing on wage and the number of jobs as two key determinants of labor mobility, we build a structural model of labor mobility where international trade affects not only wage but also the number of job opportunities. We then combine the local labor market approach to estimate the key structural parameters of our model. Our model delivers a sufficient statistic of change in worker's welfare, which can be easily estimated using a...	Erhan Artuç, Paulo Bastos, Eun‐Hee Lee
8	2025	Unravelling Deep Integration: Local Labour Market Effects of the Brexit Vote ↗ This paper applies the shift-share methodology to analyze local labor market effects, aligning closely with the empirical applications axis focusing on trade shocks and regional exposure. It utilizes local industry composition and national (or in this case, EU-wide) sectoral shifts to construct an instrument for trade barriers, mirroring the core design of Bartik instruments. Abstract This paper uses high-frequency data on the near universe of job adverts posted online in the UK to study the impact of the threat of trade barriers caused by the Brexit referendum on labour markets between January 2015 and December 2019. We develop measures of local labour market exposure to prospective trade barriers on both goods and services exports if the UK were to leave the EU without a trade deal. We find that regions that were more exposed to potential barriers on professional services exports to the EU experienced a substantial relative decline in online job adverts in the period after the referendum, particularly for higher skilled jobs and professional and managerial...	Beata Smarzynska Javorcik, Benjamin Kett, Katherine Stapleton, et al.
8	2018	Globalization and Electoral Outcomes: Evidence from Italy ↗ This paper closely relates to the trade and immigration applications of the shift-share design, specifically addressing political polarization and electoral outcomes driven by China import exposure and immigration inflows. It aligns with the project's focus on local labor market effects and the broader empirical literature on how globalization shocks influence political behavior, though it applies these mechanisms to the Italian context rather than the US. We study whether and to what extent the electoral dynamics in Italy over the 1994–2008 period can be explained by the development of economic factors associated with globalization. To measure the level of exposure to globalization for local labor markets, our main unit of analysis, we use the intensity of import competition from China and the presence of immigrants. Looking at parties’ political positions and employing an estimation strategy that accounts for endogeneity and time‐invariant unobserved effects across local labor markets, we find that both immigration intensity and exposure to import competition from China have contributed positively to the electoral outcomes of far‐right...	Mauro Caselli, Andrea Fracasso, Silvio Traverso
8	2018	Shocking Choice: Trade Shocks, Local Labor Markets and Vocational Occupation Choices This paper directly applies the shift-share instrument design to analyze the China shock's impact on local labor markets in Germany, aligning with the core trade shock empirical applications. It extends the relevant literature by examining long-term human capital and vocational choices resulting from import competition exposure. Whether individuals choose occupations that teach general or specific skills can have important implications on how protected they are from changing conditions on the labor market. This paper looks at the impact of growing up in a region exposed to structural change caused by import competition on vocational occupation choices using longitudinal social security data for Germany. Results show that individuals enter more skill-specific occupations like manufacturing and less general occupations like services if exposed to higher local import competition. Lifetime earnings are adversely affected, which can be attributed to vocational occupation choices.	Lisa Simon
8	2021	The Impact of Robots on Labor Demand: Evidence from Job Vacancy Data for South Korea ↗ This paper applies a shift-share (Bartik) instrument to estimate the local labor demand effects of robot adoption in South Korea, directly engaging with the automation literature's core empirical strategy. It provides cross-country evidence on how robot exposure affects different sectors and job routines, contributing to the broader understanding of automation's labor market impacts studied in the project. The debate about the impact of robots on employment has been lively. In this paper, we examine the effect of robots on local labor demand in South Korea, one of the most technologically advanced countries in robotics. Using the regional variation in robot exposure constructed from national industry-level robot adoption and the initial distribution of industrial employment in cities, we find that robots did not reduce local labor demand. However, we estimate declines in labor demand in the manufacturing sector and routine jobs. An increase of one robot per thousand workers in exposure to robots is correlated with a decline in the job vacancy growth of 2.9 percentage points and 2.8 percentage...	Hyejin Kim
8	2023	From Blue to Steel-Collar Jobs: The Decline in Employment Gaps? ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation axis of the project by estimating the labor market effects of robot adoption using local exposure instruments, a core shift-share application. It extends the Acemoglu & Restrepo (2020) framework by analyzing heterogeneous impacts across gender and race, providing relevant empirical evidence on how automation interacts with occupational segregation. I investigate how the introduction of industrial robots is shaping the demographic composition of the US labor force. Exploiting exogenous variation in robot exposure across local labor markets over time, I find that the adoption of robots between 1993 and 2014 decreased employment of men and women by 3.7 and 1.6 percentage points, contributing to the secular decline in the gender employment gap, and that it decreased employment among whites and non-whites by 1.8 and 4.5 percentage points, widening the race/ethnicity employment gap. I show that these effects are due to persistent occupational segregation in the US labor market, as men and non-whites are often employed in blue-collar jobs...	Benjamin Lerch
8	2022	Robots and Firm Investment ↗ [Title only] This title directly aligns with the automation/robots empirical applications axis, specifically referencing the core subject of Acemoglu & Restrepo (2020) and related firm-level studies. It likely investigates how robot adoption affects corporate behavior, fitting the project's focus on local treatment intensity and firm dynamics. No abstract available.	Efraim Benmelech, Michał Zator
8	2022	Immigration Disruptions and the Wages of Unskilled Labor in the 1920s ↗ This paper applies a shift-share methodology to analyze the impact of immigration disruptions on wages, directly aligning with the project's empirical focus on immigration and its methodological axis. It utilizes local ethnic composition shares to predict differential exposure to immigration shocks, offering historical context and validation for the Bartik instrument design central to the researcher's project. An era of mass immigration into the United States ended with the onset of World War I in Europe, followed by the passage of restrictive immigration laws in 1921 and 1924. We analyze various sources of wage data collected in the 1910-1929 period to explore the impact of this significant disruption of the flow of immigration on the wages of unskilled labor. Our approach to identification entails examining differences in wages across local labor markets and industries differentially exposed to the disruptions in immigration due to different ethnic compositions of their immigrant populations in the pre-war era. We find evidence strongly suggesting that during the 1920s, industries and regions...	Elior Cohen, Jeff Biddle
8	2008	Effects of Low-Skilled Immigration on U.S. Natives: Evidence from Hurricane Mitch ↗ This paper is a foundational study in the immigration shift-share literature, closely related to the Card (2001) enclave instrument framework mentioned in the project's scope. It directly addresses the empirical application of estimating immigration effects on native wages and employment while tackling key identification challenges such as endogeneity and general equilibrium out-migration effects. Starting in the 1980s, the composition of immigrants to the U.S. shifted towards less-skilled workers partly due to the influx of Latin American immigrants in the past few decades. Around this time, real wages and employment of younger and less-educated U.S. workers fell. Some believe that recent shifts in immigration may be partly responsible for the bad fortunes of unskilled workers in the U.S. On the other hand, some recent studies claim that low-skilled immigrants may complement relatively skilled natives. OLS estimates using Census data are consistent with this as they show that wages and employment of natives and earlier Latin Americans are positively related to recent Latin American...	Adriana D. Kugler, Mutlu Yuksel
8	2019	Parental Economic Shocks and Infant Health: The Effect of Import Competition in the U.S This paper directly applies the China shock shift-share instrument to study the causal effect of negative parental economic shocks on infant health outcomes. It contributes to the empirical applications axis by extending the labor market impacts of import exposure into public health and intergenerational welfare dimensions. Much of the literature providing causal evidence of parental economic conditions on infant health has focused on the impact of positive economic or income shocks, as opposed to negative ones. The concept of loss aversion makes it clear that individuals react differently when facing potential losses compared to potential gains, and that losses tend to be twice as psychologically powerful as gains. Moreover, long-term and persistent negative shocks such as those arising through increasing import competition could have different effects on health compared to reasonably temporary shocks such as lay-offs, recessions or business cycle fluctuations. This paper examines the effect of parental or...	Patralekha Ukil
8	2020	The Impact of NAFTA on U.S. Local Labor Market Employment ↗ This paper directly employs a shift-share design to estimate the labor market impacts of trade liberalization, fitting squarely within the trade shocks axis of the project. It provides empirical context and evidence on how local industry exposure to tariff changes affects employment outcomes, a core application area alongside the China shock literature. Abstract I study the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement on US local employment based on regional variation in exposure to US and Mexico’s tariff liberalization. Lower US tariffs led to a relative decline in the share of the working-age population employed in manufacturing (especially among low-skilled workers) in more exposed regions and increases in unemployment and in the share of the population employed in certain low-pay nonmanufacturing industries. Employment losses due to US tariff liberalization were much larger among female and nonwhite workers. Mexico’s tariff cuts, in contrast, increased manufacturing employment among individuals with college education.	Felipe Benguria
8	2016	Automation and Job Polarization: On the Decline of Middling Occupations in Europe ↗ This paper directly supports the theoretical axis by providing empirical evidence for the task-based model in Europe, linking IT price declines to the polarization of employment shares across wage levels. It reinforces the connection between automation shocks and the displacement of middling occupations, a key mechanism underlying occupation-level shift-share designs. Using data from 10 Western European countries, I provide evidence that the fall of prices of information technologies (IT) is associated with a lower share of employment in middle wage occupations and a higher share of employment in high wage occupations. The decline of IT prices has no robust effect on the share of employment in the lowest paid occupations. Similar results hold within gender, age and education-level groups, with notable differences in these groups. For instance, the share of employment in high wage occupations among females has increased more than among males with the fall of IT prices. This is consistent with arguments that women hold a comparative advantage in...	Vahagn Jerbashian
8	2017	Three Essays on Trade and Local Labor Markets ↗ This dissertation directly applies the shift-share design to study local labor market outcomes, aligning closely with the China shock literature and its extended effects on crime and health. It utilizes import exposure instruments similar to those in the core trade shock domain while exploring secondary consequences like alcohol consumption and criminal activity. This dissertation studies the effect of trade on wage dispersion, crime rates and alcohol consumption at the local labor market level in the the U.S. The first chapter develops a new measure for skill to investigate the effects of offshoring on wages of three types of workers: high-skilled, medium-skilled, and low-skilled. I also look at the effect of offshoring on wages of offshorable occupations. Although the previous literature emphasizes the impact of offshoring on the skill premium, I find that job characteristics such as offshorability is critical in explaining the wage effect. Chapter 2 analyzes the effects of increasing import exposure from the top 6 trading partners of the US...	Sandeep Sharma
8	2024	Artificial Intelligence, Tasks, Skills, and Wages: Worker-Level Evidence from Germany ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis regarding the task-based model and the differentiation between AI and robot exposure, which are central to the project's discussion of modern shift-share instruments. It provides relevant empirical evidence on how distinct technology shocks affect wages, aligning with the project's focus on automation and AI-capability indices. This paper documents novel facts on within-occupation task and skill changes over the past two decades in Germany. In a second step, it reveals a distinct relationship between occupational work content and exposure to artificial intelligence (AI) and automation (robots). Workers in occupations with high AI exposure, perform different activities and face different skill requirements, compared to workers in occupations exposed to robots. In a third step, the study uses individual labour market biographies to investigate the impact on wages between 2010 and 2017. Results indicate a wage growth premium in occupations more exposed to AI, contrasting with a wage growth discount in occupations...	Michael Koch, Erik Engberg, Magnus Lodefalk, et al.
8	2024	Assessing the Impact of Generative AI on Canadian Labor Market: An Empirical Approach ↗ This paper directly applies the task-exposure methodology central to the project's theoretical axis by adapting Felten et al.'s AI-capability indices to the Canadian labor market. It provides empirical evidence on occupational exposure to Generative AI, aligning closely with the research focus on technology shocks and their differential impacts on task content. The rapid advancement and integration of Generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) into various sectors raise significant concerns about their impact on the labor market. This research assesses the extent to which occupations in Canada are exposed to these technologies. Using data from the Canadian Occupational and Skills Information System (OaSIS) and adapting the methodology of Felton et al. (2018, 2021, 2023), we calculated AI Occupational Exposure (AIOE) scores for 900 occupations. The findings demonstrate a high correlation between Canadian and U.S. occupations in terms of AI exposure, with Pearson and Spearman coefficients of 0.888 and 0.883, respectively. Approximately 45% of...	Aida Kazemi, Ana Lucia Santos De Araujo, Genesis Andreina Uzcategui Lopez
8	2024	<div> <div> <div> <p><span>What is the Impact of AI on Firms? </span></p> </div> </div></div> ↗ [Title only] This paper directly addresses the empirical application of AI as a technological shock to firms, which is a central topic in the theoretical axis regarding task-based models and new exposure measures. It likely employs or discusses methods analogous to shift-share designs to isolate the impact of AI capabilities on firm-level outcomes, aligning with the project's focus on automation and new technologies. No abstract available.	Jiacheng Liu
8	2023	Magnification of the ‘China shock’ through the U.S. housing market ↗ This paper directly investigates a key mechanism—the housing market transmission channel—within the 'China shock' literature, which is a central empirical application of the Bartik instrument design. It extends the standard shift-share framework by incorporating general equilibrium effects, addressing the project's core concern about bridging the gap between partial-equilibrium estimates and aggregate outcomes. Abstract The ‘China shock’ operated in part through the housing market, which is one reason why its impact was so large on the U.S. labor market. We add housing to a multi‐region multi‐sector model, with individuals choosing whether and where to work. Controlling for housing reduces the negative direct impact of import exposure on manufacturing employment by 26%–31%, with a significant magnification through the housing market. A variance decomposition analysis shows that the indirect effect of the China shock through the housing market contributes an added 11% to the variance in manufacturing employment as compared to the direct effect of import exposure. For manufacturing and construction...	Yuan Xu, Hong Ma, Robert C. Feenstra
8	2024	Trade Shocks and Human Capital: Evidence from Brazil's Trade Liberalization ↗ This paper directly employs the shift-share instrumental variable design to analyze the labor market and educational impacts of trade shocks, aligning with the project's focus on the China shock literature and its methodological foundations. It extends the empirical applications axis by investigating long-term human capital outcomes, providing relevant context on how local exposure to national or international trade shifts affects individual choices. ABSTRACT This study examines the long-term effects of trade liberalization on human capital accumulation for students, specifically through schooling decisions. To establish this linkage, I leverage the significant reduction in trade tariffs following China’s WTO accession in 2001 as an identification strategy and construct the shift-share instrument variable for each Chinese prefecture’s exposure to trade shock. Utilizing cognitive test scores from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) dataset for cohorts aged between 13 to 20 at the time of trade liberalization, I find that the trade shock leads to a decline in cognitive test scores approximately 15 years later. Furthermore, combining...	Marcos Nakaguma, Arthur Viaro
8	2024	Distributional effects of immigration and imperfect labour markets ↗ This paper is closely related as it employs a shift-share instrumental variable design to study the impact of immigration, a core application area of the project. It aligns with the immigration axis and engages with the methodological debate on identification, using an instrument similar to those discussed in the Card (2001) enclave literature. In canonical models, the labour share is orthogonal to immigration shocks in the long run, regardless of the impact of immigration on productivity. In contrast, this paper provides evidence that immigration increases labour productivity while reducing the labour share. We produce this evidence using data from Great Britain with a shift-share instrument that exploits European Union expansions and changes in immigration to other high-income countries. Our results are consistent with the predictions from imperfect labour market models, where immigrant and native workers are heterogeneous in skills, and the former have lower labour supply elasticities than the latter. A significant implication...	Julián Costas-Fernández, Simón Lodato
8	2024	Imports, Exports, and Employment: India’s Trading Relationship with China ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share instrumental variable framework to analyze the labor market impacts of import competition, extending the 'China shock' literature to an emerging market context. It addresses key mechanisms within the project's scope by estimating local partial-equilibrium effects of trade exposure on employment and establishing causal links similar to the core empirical applications studied. This paper examines the effect of increased import competition and export demand on local labour markets in the context of India’s trading relationship with China. Using an instrumental variables approach, I find that Indian districts exposed to Chinese imports experience decreased manufacturing employment growth relative to their positive pre-existing trend with no offsetting adjustment in services employment or population. The negative employment effect of imports is greater for large establishments. On average, manufacturing employment does not grow in response to export demand shocks, but districts with sufficient development, density, or access to Chinese markets see increased...	Colin Davison
8	2025	Turning Away from the State: Trade Shocks and Informal Insurance in Brazil ↗ The paper utilizes a shift-share (Bartik) instrumental variable design to analyze local labor market exposure to trade shocks, aligning directly with the core methodological focus of the project. It contributes to the China shock literature by extending the empirical application to political polarization and informal insurance mechanisms in the Global South. How does economic globalization affect vote choices? Conventional wisdom holds that voters who lose from economic integration support parties that propose expanding the welfare state. However, in the Global South, where the state is frequently weak or under-resourced, people often turn to non-state organizations (such as churches) for protection against economic decline. I argue that, in these contexts, negative globalization shocks increase local communities’ dependence on non-state organizations, thereby making the leaders within such organizations more effective political brokers. To test this argument, I propose a shift-share instrument that measures the exposure of Brazilian local...	Paula Rettl
8	2025	Robot Adoption and Occupational Health ↗ This paper is closely related to the automation/robots axis of the project, employing a shift-share instrumental variable design to estimate the local partial-equilibrium effects of robot adoption on occupational health. It directly builds on the methodological framework and empirical domain established by Acemoglu and Restrepo (2020), extending the analysis to health outcomes while maintaining the core identification strategy. ABSTRACT How does robotization affect occupational health? In this paper, we investigate the impact of robot diffusion on workplace accidents and deaths in Italy, for the period 2008–2018. We adopt an instrumental variables (IV) approach that exploits robot adoption in Japan and South Korea to deal with endogeneity. We show that automation reduces fatal and non‐fatal accidents in particular for men. We provide evidence consistent with the idea that this reduction may be attributed to a shift in task allocation within the production process. As robots continue to replace labour‐intensive tasks, workers are likely being reassigned to tasks that are less physically demanding and pose lower...	Mattia Filomena, Francesco Principe
8	2025	Places versus people: the ins and outs of labor market adjustment to globalization ↗ This paper provides critical empirical evidence on the local labor market effects of the China shock, a primary application of the Bartik instrument in the trade literature. It extends the standard partial-equilibrium analysis by detailing the demographic and sectoral adjustment mechanisms within trade-exposed regions, directly informing the discussion on local versus aggregate effects and the validity of shift-share designs. This chapter analyzes the distinct adjustment paths of U.S. labor markets (places) and U.S. workers (people) to increased Chinese import competition during the 2000s. Using comprehensive register data for 2000-2019, we document that employment levels more than fully rebound in trade-exposed places after 2010, while employment-to-population ratios remain depressed and manufacturing employment further atrophies. The adjustment of places to trade shocks is generational: affected areas recover primarily by adding workers to non-manufacturing who were below working age when the shock occurred. Entrants are disproportionately native-born Hispanics, foreign-born immigrants, women, and the...
8	2025	Beyond Wealth: The Impact of Robot Adoption on Chronic Diseases ↗ This paper closely relates to the automation and robot adoption axis by employing a city-level Bartik instrument to estimate the health impacts of industrial robots. It extends the standard labor market focus of the shift-share literature into public health outcomes, aligning with the project's interest in broad effects of automation shocks. While the labor market effects of industrial robots have been extensively studied, their broader health implications, particularly on chronic diseases, remain unexplored. This study fills this gap by linking China's national-industry robot adoption data to individual health records from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS). Employing a city-level Bartik-type instrumental variable strategy, our Two-Stage Least Squares (2SLS) estimates reveal that an increase of one robot per thousand workers in a city reduces local probability of individuals having chronic diseases by 8.67%. The mechanisms driving these health benefits include better working conditions, better physical and mental...	Yinan Liu, Zou Wang, Xu Jin, et al.
8	2025	Heterogeneous effects of export-market preferences on deforestation in Brazil ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) instrumental variable design, using local industry shares and foreign demand shifts to identify causal effects, which is a core methodological focus of the project. It aligns closely with the 'foreign shift' variant and trade shock literature discussed in the project's empirical applications axis. Abstract We investigate how preferences in the European Union (EU) and China as export destinations affect deforestation dynamics in Brazil at the municipal scale, using a shift–share measure to capture local exposure to foreign demand for soy as an instrument for soy exports. Our findings indicate that municipalities more exposed to increased EU export demand experienced a decline in deforestation compared with less exposed areas, and municipalities with greater exposure to export demand from China experienced increased deforestation compared with less exposed areas. We also examine implications for due diligence policies such as the EU Regulation on deforestation-free products.	Gustavo Magalhães de Oliveira, Yaghoob Jafari, Jan Börner
8	2025	Hidden cost of automation: Do industrial robots take a toll on our mental health? ↗ This paper directly engages with the automation domain of the project by estimating the health effects of robot adoption using a Bartik instrument based on foreign industry-level data. It extends the core empirical applications by linking industrial robot exposure to individual mental health outcomes, a key extension of the Acemoglu & Restrepo (2020) framework. The news media often associates robots with anxiety, yet there is limited empirical evidence regarding the actual impact of robots on mental health. This study employs individual-level survey data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) and robot data from the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) to examine the influence of robot adoption on the mental health of the working-age population in China. Using a Bartik instrument variable constructed from foreign industry-level robot data, we find that robot adoption increases individual psychological depression levels. Further investigations illuminate that robot adoption adversely affects individual mental health by reducing current...	Y. C. Zou, Yuanyuan Chen
8	2026	Impact of technological development on the employment of older adults: Evidence from high-tech industry expansion in China ↗ This paper directly employs the Bartik instrumental variable approach to analyze labor market outcomes, aligning with the project's core methodological focus. It investigates technological shocks and their differential impacts on specific demographic groups, which connects to the automation and task-based literature discussed in the project. Technological development and population ageing have been two defining trends in recent decades. However, whether technological advancements reinstate or displace employment opportunities for older workers remains unclear. Using a nationally representative dataset from China and the Bartik instrumental variable approach, we observe that while the overall impact of technological development on employment is estimated to be negative but statistically insignificant, the negative effect intensifies with age and becomes negative beyond the age of approximately 42. We suggest that displacement effects outweigh reinstatement effects, as the negative impact is driven primarily by older adults with...	Xi Luo, Kaidong Jia, Yiming Xia, et al.
8	2025	Trade exposure, immigrants, and workplace injuries ↗ This paper applies a shift-share design using industry-level shifts from other high-income countries as instruments for local import exposure, directly aligning with the trade shock literature's methodological core. It also incorporates an immigration shift-share instrument, connecting to the project's coverage of multiple shift-share applications and their empirical diagnostics. Abstract We study the effects of globalization on workplace accidents in the Italian manufacturing sector from 2008 to 2019. We focus on the local intensity of import exposure to China and the share of foreign-born residents. To address potential endogeneity, we instrument import competition using that of other high-income countries and immigration exposure with historical conational settlements. We find that increased import competition worsens workplace safety, especially in provinces with low population density, strong transport networks, limited outside options, and many small firms. The effect is stronger in areas with below-median immigrant shares, suggesting foreign workers may...	Mattia Filomena, Alessia Lo Turco, Matteo Picchio
8	2026	Double-Booked: Constraining Effects of Overlap between School and Farming Calendars on Education and Child Labor ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) instrumental variable methodology by constructing an instrument from national crop calendar shifts weighted by local pre-policy crop shares. It serves as a relevant empirical example of the design in a non-trade, non-immigration context, illustrating the shares-based identification framework and its application to educational and labor outcomes. Overlap between school and farming calendars—pervasive in agrarian settings—forces tradeoffs between schooling and child labor by jointly constraining children’s time for both activities. Leveraging a four-month school calendar change in Malawi that inadvertently increased overlap with farming, I apply a shift-share design to estimate exogenous shifts in overlap between school and crop calendars, weighted by pre-policy crop shares and matched to panel data on schoolaged children. Consistent with theory, I find that increased overlap significantly reduces changes to both schooling and household-farm labor over a four-year period, with larger effects on schooling. A one-week increase in...	James Allen IV
8	2026	Identifying Rent-Sharing Using Firms’ Energy Input Mix ↗ This paper employs a firm-level Bartik instrument combining predetermined input shares with national price shifts, directly aligning with the methodological focus on shift-share IV designs. It applies this framework to estimate wage determination, offering a relevant empirical example of how such instruments isolate supply-side cost shocks from local demand conditions. Abstract We present causal evidence on the rent-sharing elasticity of German manufacturing firms. We develop a new firm-level Bartik instrument for firm rents that combines the firms’ predetermined energy input mix with national energy carrier price changes. Instrumental variable estimation yields a rent-sharing elasticity of approximately 0.20, implying that a 10% change in rents leads to a 2% change in wages. Rent-sharing induced by energy price variation is asymmetric and driven by energy price increases, such that, on average, workers do not benefit from energy price reductions but are harmed by price increases. Reduced-form evidence shows that a 10% increase in firm-level energy prices...	M. Merten, Steffen Mueller, Georg Neuschaeffer
8	2026	Trade in knowledge services and firm innovation ↗ This paper directly employs a shift-share instrumental variable design to analyze firm-level innovation, fitting the methodological and empirical axes of the project. It extends the trade shock literature by applying the Bartik framework to knowledge services rather than traditional goods, offering relevant insights into how foreign shifts impact domestic economic outcomes. Abstract We study the implications of trade in services for firm innovation. Using a quasi-experimental shift-share design, we find that access to foreign knowledge-related services improves the innovativeness of domestic firms and complements their indigenously sourced R&D. To confront this evidence, we develop a theoretical model. It demonstrates outsourcing can foster firm’s innovation efficiency by mitigating decreasing economies of scale in in-house innovation efforts. As a result, firms become more likely to outsource innovation efforts as they become more innovative, whereas the prevalence of offshoring depends on its associated trade costs.	Bastian Krieger, Fabian Trottner
8	2023	Automation and Income Inequality in Europe ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation/robots axis of the project by estimating the labor market effects of robot adoption in Europe, extending the Acemoglu & Restrepo (2020) framework to a multi-country context. It provides relevant cross-country evidence on how automation shocks interact with institutional factors like tax and welfare policies to influence income distribution. We study the effects of robot penetration on household income inequality in 14 European countries between 2006 – 2018, a period marked by the rapid adoption of industrial robots. Automation reduced relative hourly wages and employment of more exposed demographic groups, similarly to the results for the United States. Using robot-driven wage and employment shocks as input to the EUROMOD microsimulation model, we find that automation had minor effects on income inequality. Household labour income diversification and tax and welfare policies largely absorbed labour market shocks caused by automation. Transfers played a key role in cushioning the transmission of these shocks to household...	Karina Doorley, Jan Gromadzki, Piotr Lewandowski, et al.
8	2024	Heterogeneous Effects of Capital-Embodied Innovation on Labor Market ↗ This paper directly aligns with the project's theoretical axis by developing an occupation-level exposure index to technological change based on task similarity, mirroring the shift-share construction logic. It extends the task-based framework to capital-embodied innovation, providing relevant empirical evidence on how differential technology shocks affect labor market outcomes across occupations. This paper develops an occupation-level measure of Capital-Embodied Innovation (CEI) by matching patents with capital goods based on their text similarity. The impact of CEI on labor demand is heterogeneous, depending on the similarity between capital and occupational tasks. Specifically, CEI associated with task-similar capital reduces the relative labor demand, whereas CEI related to task-dissimilar capital raises it. Between 1980 and 2015, capital used by high-wage occupations experienced more innovations in task-dissimilar capital and fewer in task-similar capital. CEI can explain 51% of the relative wage growth in high-wage occupations and significantly contributes to routine- and...	Hyejin Park, Younghun Shim
8	2024	Tasks and Black-White Inequality Over the Long Twentieth Century ↗ This paper directly utilizes the task-based framework (routine vs. non-routine tasks) that underpins the theoretical and empirical axes of the project, specifically linking technological shifts to labor market outcomes. It provides crucial historical context and evidence on how task displacement shocks differentially affect racial groups, which is highly relevant to understanding distributional consequences of automation and industrial shifts studied in the shift-share literature. We present new evidence on the long-run trend of occupational task content by race in the United States, 1900-2021. Black workers began the transition to better paid, cognitive-intensive modern jobs at least a generation after white workers; substantial convergence only occurred from 1960 onwards. Longitudinal data suggests that transitions to new task content were racially biased: Black men moved to jobs with lower rewarded task content than white men, conditional on initial task content, though gaps decreased after World War II. Routine-intensive Black workers were less likely to move up into non-routine analytic work compared to white workers in both historical and modern periods. The...	Rowena Gray, Siobhan O’Keefe, Sarah Quincy, et al.
8	2024	Robots and Inequality Between and Within Occupations ↗ [Title only] This title directly aligns with the project's theoretical axis on the task-based model and the empirical applications axis concerning robot adoption's effects on wages and employment across skill groups. It likely discusses how automation differentially impacts occupations, which is central to understanding the distributional consequences of the technology shocks studied in shift-share designs. No abstract available.	Rodimiro Rodrigo Flores, Roberto M. Samaniego, Zhang Yun
8	2025	Automation and the Changing Composition of Skill Demand ↗ This paper is closely related to the project as it employs a task-based framework to analyze how automation reshapes skill demand within occupations, aligning with the theoretical axis on task content and polarization. Although it uses firm-level data rather than a traditional shift-share instrumental variable design, it directly addresses the empirical application of automation's labor market effects and the underlying task-based mechanisms central to the researcher's project. <div> This paper provides new evidence on how automation transforms firms' demand for <span>skills, not by changing the occupational composition, but by reshaping what existing </span><span>jobs require. Using matched data on firm-level automation investments and detailed job </span><span>ads from Denmark, we extract multidimensional skill profiles through natural language </span><span>processing. Guided by a task-based framework, we decompose changes in skill demand </span><span>into within- and between-occupation components and find that within-occupation ad</span><span>justments dominate. Automation increases the demand for soft skills in professional </span><span>and managerial roles...	Mark Hellsten, Giuseppe Pulito, Sarah Schroeder
8	2026	Where Have All the (Boomer) Routine Workers Gone? ↗ This paper directly applies the task-based framework central to the project, utilizing granular ONET data to measure routine versus abstract task exposure for automation risk. It provides empirical evidence on worker mobility and wage outcomes following exposure to automation, aligning closely with the project's focus on the theoretical and empirical aspects of routine-biased technological change. Abstract This paper examines the employment outcomes of a cohort of non-college educated individuals who exit employment from occupations most exposed to automation risk. The analysis employs a novel set of granular task measures estimated from the detailed job attributes in the Occupational Information Network (ONET). The granularity enables a rich characterization of non-routine work and task mobility choices for those without a college degree. The data yield multiple types of interpersonal, decision-making, cognitive, and technical tasks. Employing the granular tasks to analyze the employment outcomes for non-college educated workers who transition out of routine work, this study finds...	Carol Scotese
8	2026	Imported intermediate digital inputs and income inequality ↗ This paper is closely related as it explicitly employs the shift-share instrumental variable design to analyze the distributional effects of digital technology adoption, aligning with the project's focus on automation and task-based mechanisms. It contributes to the empirical literature on how technology shocks affect labor markets and inequality, which is a key domain within the researcher's scope. This paper analyzes the impacts of importing intermediate digital inputs (IDIs) on income inequality between high-skilled and low-skilled workers, using a novel dataset that merges recent EU KLEMS and OECD data for 29 countries and 15 industries for 2008-2020. We find that IDI imports significantly widen income inequality, because such imports are associated with higher technology and capital intensities, which directly increase income inequality by complementing high-skilled labor while substituting for low-skilled labor, and indirectly exacerbate inequality through workforce skill upgrading. Heterogeneity analysis shows that these occur primarily in highly digitalized countries and...	Yanne Gabriella Velomasy, Yueling Wei, Hongsheng Zhang, et al.
8	2026	The Labor Market Impact of Occupation-Specific Technical Change: Inspecting the Mechanisms ↗ [Title only] This title strongly suggests an investigation into the mechanisms behind occupation-specific technical change, which is central to the task-based model and shift-share literature on automation and polarization. It likely analyzes how routine-biased technological change affects labor market outcomes, aligning closely with the theoretical and empirical core of the researcher's project. No abstract available.	Fenella Carpena, Simon Galle
8	2026	A nagy nyelvi modellek potenciális termelékenységi hatásai a magyar gazdaságban ↗ This paper applies the task-based exposure framework to Large Language Models in Hungary, directly aligning with the project's theoretical axis on new AI and LLM task-exposure measures. It utilizes local industry composition data to estimate economic impacts, serving as a relevant empirical context for the shift-share methodology applied to emerging technologies. A tanulmány a nagy nyelvi modellek (Large Language Model, LLMs) termelékenységre és gazdasági növekedésre gyakorolt potenciális hatását vizsgálja Magyarországon. Az elemzés Acemoglu (2025), valamint Aghion és Bunel (2024) keretrendszereire épül, és a hazai munkaerőpiac munkakörszintű LLM-érintettségének becslését használja fel, álláshirdetési adatok alapján. A számítások szerint az LLM-ek által érintett gazdasági tevékenységek aránya mérsékelt, ami a teljes tényezőtermelékenység (TFP) 0,25–0,81 százalékpontos növekedését eredményezheti a következő évtizedben. Ez éves szinten 0,05–0,15 százalékpontos GDP-növekedésnek felel meg. A becsült hatások elmaradnak az amerikai eredményektől, ami...	Zoltán Korsós, Eszter Baranyai, Dalma Eszter Fekete
8	2021	Health Effects of Trade Liberalization: Evidence from US Counties ↗ This paper applies the shift-share (Bartik) identification strategy to study the health consequences of the China shock, directly aligning with the trade shocks axis of the project. It extends the empirical application domain by documenting health outcomes, complementing the existing literature on labor market and political effects. This paper explores the potential externality of trade liberalization between the US and China on air pollution and infants’ health outcomes. Exploiting the differential impact of tariff reductions due to trade liberalization across industries combined with compositional variations of industry-specific employment across counties as the main source of identification strategy and using the universe of birth records in the US over the years 1990-2017 (over 97 million observations), we document substantial improvements in birth outcomes of mothers residing in counties with higher exposure to trade policy change. The exposed counties experienced sharp drops in employment specifically for...	Amirhooshang Navaei, Farhad Farnoud
8	2021	Robots Don't Pay Taxes: Deindustrialization and Fiscal Decline ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation and robots empirical application axis by estimating the fiscal consequences of industrial robot adoption using spatial variation in exposure. It extends the core shift-share literature by linking labor market shocks from automation to local government revenue and spending outcomes, complementing the study of robot adoption effects on employment and wages. Deindustrialization has fundamentally reshaped the economic geography of the United States. Between 1993 and 2007 alone, increasing automation—the use of industrial robots to perform tasks done by human workers—led to the loss of upwards of 750,000 jobs, primarily in the industrial Midwest and Northeast. Prior research demonstrates the social consequences of manufacturing’s decline extend beyond its impact on workers to undermine the health and economic prospects of entire communities. But through which mechanisms? This study examines the impact of increasing automation on local government finance. Exploiting spatial variation in the adoption of industrial robots, we find each additional...	Rourke O’Brien, Zachary Parolin, Atheendar Venkataramani
8	2024	Effects of Chinese Import Competition on Self-Employed Business Owners in the Us ↗ This paper applies the shift-share (Bartik) instrument based on Chinese import shocks to examine labor market outcomes, specifically focusing on self-employment, which aligns directly with the trade shock application axis. It extends the core China shock literature by analyzing the effects on entrepreneurs rather than just wage earners, providing relevant empirical context for the project. Exploiting variation in exposure to Chinese import growth across local markets, I investigate the effects of import competition on self-employment in the US. The China trade shock had a sizable negative impact on incorporated self-employed business owners (i.e., entrepreneurs) in manufacturing. The reduction in entrepreneurs also significantly contributed to the decline in total manufacturing employment. The analysis also indicates that other sectors have not absorbed entrepreneurs released from manufacturing. Finally, the effects on entrepreneurship are similar across different demographic groups characterized by gender, age, and education.	Bulent Unel
8	2024	The China Shock and Internal Migration Evidence from Bilateral Migration Flows ↗ [Title only] This paper directly investigates the labor market consequences of the China shock, a primary empirical application of shift-share designs in trade literature. It likely utilizes or critiques exposure instruments to analyze internal migration responses, fitting squarely within the project's core interest in local labor market effects and identification challenges. No abstract available.	Seung Hoon Lee, Jaerim Choi, Hyoungchul Kim
8	2024	Resource Boom, Export Composition, Concentration, and Sophistication: Evidence from Brazilian Local Economies ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) IV design, using Chinese demand shifts and local export composition shares to identify the causal effects of trade shocks on Brazilian local economies. It aligns closely with the project's core methodological and empirical focus by addressing the China shock literature, Dutch disease patterns, and the distinction between partial-equilibrium trade effects. This paper investigates the impact of resource booms on export value, concentration, composition, and sophistication in resource-rich developing economies. Using a shift-share instrument that leverages heterogeneous exposure to Chinese demand after China’s 2001 WTO accession and the ex-ante composition of export baskets, I examine the causal effects on export baskets and sectoral employment of Brazilian local economies. The findings reveal increased export values and concentration in more exposed regions, with a shift from resource-based manufactures to primary products and declining export sophistication. Despite wage growth in primary and service sectors, primary employment remained...	Vinicius Cícero
8	2025	Automation and Diverging Health Risks ↗ [Title only] This paper likely examines the health consequences of automation or industrial shifts, directly linking to the project's focus on the real-world impacts of technological change and robot adoption. It fits well within the empirical applications axis regarding labor market outcomes and potentially connects to the task-based model literature on how technology affects workers differently. No abstract available.	Soojin Kim, Michael F. Pesko, Romilda Ang, et al.
8	2026	Trade Shocks and Attentive Voting: Evidence from U.S. Local Labor Markets ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share design to the China shock literature to analyze political polarization and voter behavior, a key empirical application of the project. It utilizes the standard Bartik instrument construction to identify local labor market effects, aligning closely with the trade shock and political economy dimensions of the research agenda. How do voters respond to trade shocks? And can legislators influence voter responses through their standpoints on free trade? In this paper, I address these questions using the emergence of China as a major global exporter as a quasi-experiment that created substantial geographic variation in the U.S. regarding exposure to international trade and its consequences for local labor markets. I find that voters are less likely to reelect representatives if they suffered from trade shocks, but are also highly responsive to politicians’ political positions and their responsibility, up to the point where representatives may benefit from their electorate being among the losers from trade. Further...	Gunnar Heins
8	2026	Gender-Segmented Labour Markets and Foreign Demand Shocks ↗ This paper applies the shift-share methodology using foreign demand shocks as the 'shift' component to analyze labor market outcomes, fitting squarely within the project's trade shock and empirical applications axes. It specifically investigates gender-segmented labor markets, offering a relevant extension of the core Bartik instrument framework to distributional effects within developing economies. Gender segmentation in labor markets shapes the local effects of international trade. We develop a theory that combines exports with gender-segmented labor markets and show that, in this framework, foreign demand shocks may either increase or decrease the female-to-male employment ratio. If a foreign demand shock happens in a female-intensive (male-intensive) sector, the model predicts that the female-to-male employment ratio should increase (decrease). We then use plausibly exogenous variation in the exposure of Tunisian local labor markets to foreign demand shocks and show that the empirical results are consistent with the theoretical prediction. In Tunisia, a developing country with a...	Carlos Góes, Gladys Lopez-Acevedo, Raymond Robertson
8	2021	Innovation on Tools and the Rise of Skill Premium ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis of the project by linking capital-embodied innovation to task-based models of labor demand, specifically examining how technology substitutes for or complements occupational tasks. It provides crucial context for the automation and polarization literature by distinguishing between task-substituting and task-complementing innovations, which are central to understanding the distributional effects of technological change analyzed in shift-share designs. This paper develops a measure of Capital-Embodied Innovation (CEI). The measure counts the number of patents applied to capital goods by matching patent documents with Wikipedia articles on capital goods. Using occupation-level variations on the sets of capital goods from O*NET, we document that CEI is biased toward abstract and non-routine occupations. Furthermore, we highlight the heterogeneous effects of CEI across the capital good-occupation relationship. When the capital good performs a similar function as the occupational task (task-substituting capital), the CEI reduces the relative demand for labor. In case the capital good performs a different function than the occupation tasks...	Hyejin Park, Younghun Shim
8	2024	Equalizing the Effects of Automation? The Role of Task Overlap for Job Finding ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis of the project by utilizing task-based models and occupation-level exposure indices to analyze automation's labor market impacts. It contributes to the methodological context by proposing a novel task overlap measure derived from language models, which serves as a sophisticated variant of the Bartik-style exposure indices central to the automation literature. This paper investigates whether task overlap can equalize the effects of automation for unemployed job seekers displaced from routine jobs. Using a language model, weestablish a novel job-to-job task similarity measure. Exploiting the resulting job network to define job markets flexibly, we find that only the most similar jobs affect job finding. Sinceautomation-exposed jobs overlap with other highly exposed jobs, task-based reallocation provides little relief for affected job seekers. We show that this is not true for more recentsoftware exposure, for which task overlap mitigates the distributional consequences.	Diego Dabed, Sabrina Genz, Emilie Rademakers
8	2026	Automation, trade and multinational activity: Micro evidence from Spain ↗ This paper closely relates to the project's automation axis by examining the effects of robot adoption on firm behavior, using task-based measures of exposure similar to those discussed in the theoretical framework. It provides empirical context on how technological shifts interact with global production networks, a key mechanism in understanding the broader economic impacts of automation. We use a rich dataset of Spanish manufacturing firms from 1990 to 2016 to shed light on how automation in a high-income country affects trade and multinational activity involving lower-income countries. We exploit variation in firm exposure to robotics inventions over time, as measured using ex ante task specialization and the tasks described in new robotics patents. We show that the deployment of robots in Spanish firms had a positive impact on their offshoring to lower-income countries. For firms that had not yet offshored production to lower-income countries, robot adoption caused them to start newly doing so. By contrast, for firms that were already offshoring to lower-income countries...	Katherine Stapleton, Michael Webb
8	2026	The labour market geography of generative AI ↗ [Title only] This title strongly suggests a direct application of the task-based shift-share framework to generative AI, likely constructing an exposure index for local labor markets using occupation-level task shares similar to Webb (2019) or Eloundou et al. (2023). It aligns with the theoretical axis of mapping new technologies to task content and the empirical concern of local partial-equilibrium effects of technological shocks. No abstract available.	Scott Abrahams, Frank Levy
8	2026	Firms' GitHub Copilot adoption and labor market outcomes for software engineers ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis of the project by applying task-based models to generative AI, specifically using exposure measures to analyze effects on software engineers. It aligns with the empirical focus on automation/AI impacts on labor markets, extending the scope beyond traditional robots and routine tasks to modern LLM applications. Abstract Using LinkedIn and GitHub data, this paper examines how firms' adoption of GitHub Copilot (GHC), a generative AI coding assistant, relates to software engineer (SWE) skills and labor outcomes. GHC adoption is associated with around a 3%–5% higher monthly probability of hiring SWEs, driven by entry‐level hires. New hires exhibit around 5% more non‐programming skills, with no decrease in coding skills. These findings are consistent with, for SWEs, GAI's productivity impacts and creation of new tasks outweighing potential displacement effects from automation of some SWE tasks.	Matthew Baird, Mar Carpanelli, Brian Xu, et al.
8	2026	Which workers are more affected by generative AI? Evidence from South Korea ↗ [Title only] This paper likely falls within the theoretical axis by constructing and analyzing a generative AI task-exposure measure for South Korean occupations, analogous to LLM task-exposure measures. It directly addresses the project's interest in how new technologies differentially affect workers based on task content, extending the automation literature to the specific context of generative AI. No abstract available.	Taiwon Ha
8	2025	An Assessment of Occupational Exposure to Artificial Intelligence in Italy ↗ This paper applies occupation-level exposure indices to AI, aligning directly with the project's theoretical axis on task-based models and modern technological exposure measures like AI-capability indices. It provides relevant empirical context by assessing how different workers are affected by AI in a specific national setting, contributing to the broader literature on technology shocks and labor market dynamics. Artificial intelligence (AI) is a general-purpose technology with broad applicability across domains and economic sectors, which is expected to have a significant impact on the labour market in the coming years. We review some of the most recent measurements of labour market exposure to AI in advanced economies and then assess the implications for the Italian labour market. We find that occupations that are more exposed to AI, i.e. more at risk of being complemented or substituted by it, are in the top two quintiles of the income distribution, mostly in the service sector, and employ a large share of women and of highly-skilled workers. Substitutable workers are more protected from the risk...	Antonio Dalla Zuanna, Davide Dottori, Elena Gentili, et al.
8	2025	Methods for Evaluating Engineering Occupational Exposure to Artificial Intelligence ↗ This paper directly addresses the project's theoretical axis on task-based models and occupational exposure to automation, specifically focusing on AI-capability indices which are a key modern extension of the Bartik framework. It provides a systematic review of methods for measuring exposure, which is essential for constructing the local treatment intensity variables central to the researcher's study of shift-share instruments in the automation and AI domains. As artificial intelligence (AI) technologies advance rapidly, their impact on the engineering profession is potentially imminent. This paper provides a systematic review and comprehensive comparison of existing methods to assess occupational exposure to AI applications. By evaluating 36 papers and reports, we categorize the methods into five themes: expert opinions, qualitative surveys, quantitative approaches, deep learning techniques including Natural Language Processing (NLP), and analyses utilizing previous models. The strengths and weaknesses of each method are examined based on key metrics, including analysis time, strength of data sources, reliability, and specificity at a task...	Tamara Kecman, Maxwell Fingold, Susan McCahan
8	2026	AI's Job Shakeup: Analyzing the Uneven Impact of AI Adoption on Labor Demand ↗ This paper directly addresses the project's theoretical and empirical focus on automation by constructing a task-based AI exposure measure and analyzing its labor demand effects. It aligns with the project's coverage of new AI-capability indices and the distinction between operational adoption and skill hiring within the shift-share framework context. This paper studies how direct AI adoption, rather than AI skill hiring alone, reshapes firm-level labor demand. We construct a novel measure of operational AI adoption from 10-K filings using natural language processing, large language models, and a neural-network classifier, combine it with Webb's (2019) occupation-level AI exposure score, and link it to Lightcast job postings for Compustat firms from 2010 to 2022. Using a long difference design over one to five year horizons, we find that job postings in high exposure occupations decline over time following AI adoption, reaching -0.14 percent at the two-year horizon and -0.30 percent at the five-year horizon, with the richer specification...	Bin Gu, Mohammad Soltanieh-Ha, Xiupeng Wang
8	2026	Task-Structure Measures of AI Exposure as Instruments for Direct Adoption: Validation Across BTOS, Eurostat, and AIOE ↗ This paper directly validates task-based exposure measures, such as the Felten-Raj-Seamans AIOE score, which are explicitly listed in the project's theoretical axis as occupation-level analogues to Bartik instruments. It provides crucial empirical evidence regarding the construction and reliability of these exposure indices, addressing the methodological concerns around how task structure proxies for technology shocks. <div> <div> <div> <p></p> <div> <div> <div> <p><span>Recent work in labor economics and the economics of AI relies on task-level measures of AI exposure that have never been validated against direct measurement of firm- level adoption, because such measurement at sectoral granularity did not exist until late 2023. We use the Census Bureau’s Business Trends and Outlook Survey AI Sup- plement (United States, 2023-2026) and Eurostat’s </span><span>isoc_eb_ain2 </span><span>(twelve European economies, 2024) to provide that validation. The Workflow Completeness measure (</span><span>C</span><span>∗</span><span>) of Verschuere and Cameron (2026a) correlates with BTOS firm-reported adop- tion at...	benjamin verschuere, Angus Cameron
8	2026	What AI Cannot Learn: Human Capital Investment in an AI Economy ↗ This paper directly addresses the project's theoretical axis by developing a task-based model of human-AI interaction that determines occupational exposure to AI capabilities. It extends the framework for understanding how technological shifts differentially affect tasks, providing a structural complement to empirical measures of AI exposure. We study human capital investment in a model where humans and AI are symmetric learners, identical except in compute and data. AI has a structural limit: its training data contains no first-personal experience. Tasks combine distributional and first-personal skills, and are assigned to either humans or AI. We show that tasks with sufficient first-personal content remain permanently in the human domain, regardless of how cheap AI becomes. As AI cheapens, a Baumol channel raises the wage of first-personal skill, which overtakes ordinary cognitive skill if human-exclusive tasks are sufficiently first-personal-skill intensive. Optimal investment shifts toward first-personal skill; investment in...	Michael Wong
8	2026	AI adoption in China: spatial and occupational disparities ↗ [Title only] This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis concerning LLM task-exposure measures and the structural task-based model, which is central to the project's interest in automation and occupational polarization. While the specific geographic focus on China introduces a potential foreign-shift component rather than a standard domestic shift-share instrument, the analysis of spatial and occupational disparities aligns closely with the methodological concerns about local exposure indices and general-equilibrium effects. No abstract available.	Jianyong Fan, Huiyu Qi, Yuting Leng
8	2026	AI Skill Demand and Employment Stratification in Copyright-Intensive Information Industries: Evidence from Job Postings and Industry-Level Employment Data ↗ This paper is closely related as it investigates the labor market effects of AI adoption, a key theme within the task-based model and automation literature central to the project. It utilizes employer demand for AI skills as a measure of technology exposure, aligning with the methodological focus on occupation- and industry-level exposure indices such as those discussed by Felten et al. (2021) and Eloundou et al. (2023). This paper examines how employer demand for workers skilled in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) is associated with employment patterns in copyright-intensive industries within the U.S. information sector. Using panel data from the Census Bureau's Quarterly Workforce Indicators combined with data on AI-related job postings, we analyze how the relationship between employer demand for AI skills and employment levels varies across worker groups between 2018 and 2024. Furthermore, we document changes in this relationship following the widespread introduction of generative AI in late 2022. We find that employment in copyright-reliant information industries declined relative to other...	Michael Palmedo, Brent Lutes, Ryan Safner
8	2026	Artificial intelligence exposure and labor market transformations in Latin America ↗ This paper directly applies the occupational shift-share methodology using AI exposure indices, which is a core component of the project's theoretical and empirical axes regarding automation and task-based models. It extends the Bartik-like framework to a new regional context (Latin America), providing valuable comparative evidence on how AI-driven labor market transformations manifest outside the traditional OECD settings. This paper examines the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) for employment, wages, and inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Using individual-level data from the STEP and PIAAC surveys and AI exposure indices from Webb (2020) and Felten et al. (2021), we estimate predicted AI exposure for workers across seven LAC economies (Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, and Peru) and a set of OECD comparators. We then link occupation-level exposure to changes in employment and wages obtained from harmonized household surveys for the five LAC countries with comparable data over the period (Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru). The empirical strategy...	Pablo Egana-delSol, Claudio Bravo-Ortega
8	2026	Measuring AI Exposure in the Generative AI Era Why Expert-Rating Indices Attenuate Interaction Estimates ↗ This paper directly critiques the quality of AI task-exposure measures, a key component of the theoretical axis concerning occupation-level Bartik instruments. It addresses the validity of shift-share style exposure indices by highlighting measurement error and attenuation bias, which are central methodological concerns for the researcher's project on identifying assumptions and diagnostics. Expert-rating AI exposure measures compress within-group variance conditional on cognitive intensity, producing attenuation bias in interaction estimates invisible in aggregate statistics. Using Felten et al. (2021) and a task-text TF-IDF measure calibrated to generative AI, within-tier SD ratios (Felten/TF-IDF) fall from 0.98 at low cognitive intensity to 0.67–0.68 at mid and high, while the full-sample ratio is 1.12. A significant negative AI–wage interaction under TF-IDF (b3 = −0.051, p < 0.001) is undetectable under Felten (b3 = +0.011, ns). A non-random coverage gap compounds the attenuation. Researchers should verify within-group variance properties before interpreting null...	Toshiaki Mitsudome
8	2026	Borrowing for Green? Local Government Debt and Firms’ Energy Intensity in China ↗ This paper directly employs the Bartik shift-share instrumental variable design, using leave-one-out credit-supply shocks and predetermined city exposure shares to identify causal effects. It aligns closely with the methodological axis by applying these techniques to a fiscal policy context (local government debt) while addressing identification issues through a leave-one-out construction. Using a panel of Chinese industrial firms over 2008-2017 matched to city-level Local Government Financial Vehicle (LGFV) borrowing, we estimate the impact of local government debt on firms’ energy intensity. Identification relies on a Bartik shift-share instrument that combines leave-one-out provincial credit-supply shocks with predetermined city exposure shares. We find a robust inverted-U relationship in which additional borrowing increases energy intensity at low debt level, while the marginal effect turns negative once LGFV debt exceeds roughly 13% of local GDP. The nonlinearity is stronger and the turning point is lower in high-investment cities, while the turning point is higher in...	Haoran Yang, Satoshi Honma
8	2023	The Impact of Trade and Technology on the Regional Migration of Routine Workers ↗ The paper directly addresses the core shift-share empirical context by analyzing the China trade shock and technology-induced automation shocks on labor market adjustments. It provides key empirical evidence on how these specific shocks differentially affect routine workers, linking trade and automation mechanisms to regional migration dynamics. This paper analyses the effects of trade and technology shocks on the internal migration of workers in the United States between 1990 and 2007. Exploiting geographical variation in the intensity of exposure to trade in local labour markets, the paper finds that routine workers exhibit a lower out-migration response to rising Chinese import competition than non-routine workers. That is despite the China trade shock triggering larger falls in routine labour demand and wages. This goes hand-in-hand with falls in the shares of routine in-migrants into more technologically advanced regions, in which the automation of routine-tasks displaces routine workers and reduces their employment...	Marta Alvaro Taús
8	2019	Revisiting the Role of Trade and Automation in US Labor Market Polarization ↗ This paper directly addresses the project's empirical applications by disentangling the labor market effects of trade shocks and automation, two core shift-share instrumental variable designs. It extends the theoretical axis by combining global value chain exposure with automation indices to explain labor market polarization, aligning closely with the project's focus on task-based models and local partial-equilibrium effects. The increase in the share of highand low-wage employment at the expense of middle-wage employment has been a striking feature of the US economy. We exploit differences across local labor markets in the exposure to Global Value Chains (GVCs), Chinese import competition and automation to study the drivers of this labor market polarization. Using value added trade data, we are able to correctly assign trade-related shocks to local labor markets, based on the source of value added. Across the 722 commuting zones that approximate US local labor markets, we find that employment polarization is mainly driven by their exposure to automation. GVCs lead to an increase in the employment share of...	Cosimo Beverelli, Stela Rubínová, Victor Stolzenburg, et al.
8	2025	Can Robotization Save Jobs from Slowbalization? * ↗ This paper directly engages with the automation and trade shock axes by using a Bartik-style IV to examine how robot adoption interacts with export slowdowns in Chinese local labor markets. It contributes to the core discussion on the labor market effects of technology shocks and provides empirical evidence on the interplay between automation and international trade dynamics. This paper investigates how robot adoption interacts with trade slowdowns to impact local labor markets in China. We highlight the role of industrial robots in mitigating the adverse impact of export slowdown on the local labor market. Employing a Bartik-style instrumental variable approach, we construct a prefecture-level measure of robot adoption and find that an interquartile increase in robot installations leads to a relative increase in the employment of around 0.16 percentage points, holding the Chinese export shock constant at its mean value of 61.42 dollars per worker. Our evidence suggests that firms' adoption of robots helps offset employment losses from trade slowdown by...	Chan Yu, Hong Ma, Fan Zhang
8	2024	The China Shock Revisited: Job Reallocation and Industry Switching in U.S. Labor Markets ↗ This paper directly extends the China shock literature by analyzing intra-firm job reallocation and industry switching in response to import competition, a core empirical application of the shift-share design. It provides critical microfoundations for understanding how local labor markets adjust to exogenous trade shocks, refining the partial-equilibrium mechanisms central to the project. Using confidential administrative data from the U.S. Census Bureau we revisit how the rise in Chinese import penetration has reshaped U.S. local labor markets. Local labor markets more exposed to the China shock experienced larger reallocation from manufacturing to services jobs. Most of this reallocation occurred within firms that simultaneously contracted manufacturing operations while expanding employment in services. Notably, about 40% of the manufacturing job loss effect is due to continuing establishments switching their primary activity from manufacturing to trade-related services such as research, management, and wholesale. The effects of Chinese import penetration vary by local...	Nicholas Bloom, Kyle Handley, André Kurmann, et al.
8	2025	Under Pressure: Trade Competition from Low-Wage Countries and Demand for Immigrant Labor in Italy ↗ This paper directly utilizes a shift-share instrumental variable design to analyze the interaction between trade shocks and immigration, a core methodological and topical interest of the project. It extends the standard trade shock literature by examining how import competition influences immigrant inflows, thereby addressing the complex interplay between the two primary applications listed in the project description. This study examines whether trade competition from low-wage countries (LWCs) can influence immigration patterns in an advanced economy. We focus on Italy between 2003 and 2013, a period characterized by rising market pressure from China and Eastern Europe. Using census data on sectoral employment, administrative records on immigrants by nationality, and disaggregated bilateral trade data, we investigate whether heightened import competition acted as a pull factor for migrant workers at the local labor market level. To identify the exogenous component of these trade shocks, we adopt a shift-share instrumental variable strategy, while disaggregating immigrant data by nationality allows us to...	Mauro Caselli, Silvio Traverso
8	2025	Trade Shock, Slums and Structural Transformation Changing Rural-Urban Migration Opportunities ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share design to study the China trade shock in Brazil, focusing on rural-urban migration and slum expansion. It utilizes local industry composition and export demand shifts to identify causal effects, aligning closely with the trade shock literature and methodological frameworks central to the project. This paper studies the effects of the China trade shock on slum expansion in a developing economy. Using census data for Brazil from 2000 to 2010, we show that regions with greater exposure to export demand experienced relatively lower growth in slums. To explain this result, since many slum dwellers migrated from rural areas concentrated in agricultural and extractive sectors, we disentangle the local effects from the migratory component of the economic shock using pre-shock migrant networks. Our findings indicate that increased export demand through migrant networks helped curb slum expansion by redirecting internal migration from urban areas facing greater import competition to regions...	Lucas Osmar Ludwig Mariano, Luciene Torres de Mello Pereira
8	2018	Labor Market Adjustment to Third Party Competition: Evidence from Mexico ↗ This paper applies the Bartik shift-share instrument to analyze labor market effects of import competition, directly aligning with the project's core methodological and empirical axes. It extends the China shock literature by examining third-market competition, providing valuable evidence on wage and employment adjustments in a related geographic and sectoral context. China’s exports reduce wages in importing countries, but few studies have looked at competition in third party markets. We examine labor market outcomes in Mexico’s apparel and textile sectors associated with U.S. apparel and textile imports from China. Using the Bartik (1991) approach, we find that U.S. imports from China are associated with a reduction of wages and employment in Mexico’s textile and apparel sector. Our results suggest that the adjustment to falling labor demand had larger effects on employment, which is consistent with relatively small firm-level employment adjustment costs, and that low-wage workers are more tied to local markets.	Raymond Robertson, Timothy J. Halliday, Sindhu Vasireddy
8	2019	Localized Effects of the China Trade Shock: Is There an Effect on Consumer Expenditure? ↗ This paper applies the China shock shift-share instrument to examine the impact of import competition on local consumer expenditure, directly engaging with the core empirical applications of the project. It extends the labor market focus of the China shock literature by investigating consumption responses, thereby providing relevant evidence on the broader economic consequences of localized trade shocks. The paper contributes to a vast literature on the effects of recent rise in Chinese import competition on the U.S. local labor markets. The previous literature has shown that higher imports cause higher unemployment and reduced wages in local labor markets that house import-competing manufacturing industries. This paper revisits these findings and examines whether the exposure of local labor markets to increased import competition has an impact on local consumer expenditure. Using household scanner data, I show that the effect of the China trade shock on changes in local non-durable consumer expenditure in nominal and real terms are not distinguishable from zero. Moreover, I show that, in...	Nadiia Lazhevska
8	2023	When Women's Work Disappears: Marriage and Fertility Decisions in Peru ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share (Bartik) instrumental variable design to analyze the local labor market effects of the China shock, a core empirical application of the research project. It extends the literature by examining gendered demographic outcomes, thereby contributing to the understanding of trade shock mechanisms and their broader socioeconomic impacts. This paper studies the gendered labor market and demographic effects of trade liberalization in Peru. To identify these effects, we use variation in the exposure of local labor markets to import competition from China based on their baseline industrial composition. On average, the increase in Chinese imports during 1998-2008 led to a persistent decline in the employment share of low-educated female workers but had smaller and transitory effects on the employment of low-educated men. In contrast to the predictions of Becker's model of household specialization, we find that the increase in import competition during this period increased the share of single low-educated people and decreased...	Hani Mansour, Pamela Medina, Andrea Velásquez
8	2021	Minimum wages and the China Syndrome: Causal evidence from US local labor markets ↗ This paper closely relates to the project by applying the shift-share instrumental variable design to study the interaction between trade shocks and labor market institutions, a key theme in the 'China shock' literature. It explicitly uses the methodological framework of constructing instruments from industry-level shifts weighted by local composition to identify causal effects on local labor markets. Exposure to Chinese import competition led to significant manufacturing job losses in the United States. Local labor markets, however, differ significantly in how they fared with respect to manufacturing employment. An important question is whether labor market institutions have an impact on the dynamic response of manufacturing employment to rising import penetration. We contribute to this debate by showing that minimum wages amplified the negative effect of Chinese import penetration on manufacturing employment in US local labor markets between 2000 and 2007. We develop a rigorous double-edged identification strategy. First, we construct shift-share instrumental variables to address the...	Luke Milsom, Isabelle Roland
8	2025	Local Shocks and Internal Migration: The Disparate Effects of Robots and Chinese Imports in the Us ↗ This paper directly investigates the differential local labor market effects of two primary shift-share instruments: industrial robots and Chinese import competition. It extends the core empirical applications of the project by analyzing internal migration responses and spillovers, thereby contributing to the understanding of how these specific shocks propagate through regional economies. Migration is a key mechanism through which local labor markets adjust to eco- nomic shocks. In this paper, we analyze the migration response of American workers to two of the most important shocks that hit US manufacturing since the 1990s: Chinese import competition and the introduction of industrial robots. Exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in exposure across US local labor markets over time, we establish a new fact. Even though both shocks drastically reduced employment in the manufacturing sector, only robots led to a sizable decline in population size. We provide evidence that negative employment spillovers outside manufacturing, caused by robots but not by Chinese imports, can...	Andrés Sarto, Marco Tabellini, Marius Faber
8	2017	Import Competition and the Decline in U.S. Entrepreneurship ↗ This paper directly applies the logic of import competition shocks to entrepreneurship entry, a core application domain of the shift-share methodology. It aligns with the 'China shock' literature by analyzing asymmetric inter-industry shifts driven by external trade pressures on local labor markets. We theoretically and empirically analyze whether the rise in globalization and trade integration of product markets have contributed to the observed decline in US entrepreneurship. Using a unique panel dataset of US households and a difference-in-differences identification strategy, our study is unique in theoretically predicting and empirically documenting asymmetric inter-industry shifts in entrepreneurial activity across different sectors in response to increased competition from lower-cost imports. Greater import competition reduces entry in exposed industries by individuals with low occupational skills (those in routine task-intensive service occupations or exhibiting high occupational...	Hadiye Aslan, Praveen Kumar
8	2023	How Do Low-Education Immigrants Adjust to Chinese Import Shocks? Evidence Using English Language Proficiency ↗ This paper closely aligns with the China shock literature by employing a shift-share (Bartik) instrument to analyze the local labor market effects of Chinese import competition on a specific demographic. It contributes to the project's empirical applications axis by investigating worker-level adjustment mechanisms, specifically human capital acquisition through language learning, rather than just employment or wage outcomes. This paper examines the link between trade-induced changes in local labor market opportunities and English language fluency rates among low-education immigrants in the United States. The production-based manufacturing jobs lost due to Chinese import competition around the turn of the century did not require strong English-speaking skills while many of the jobs in expanding industries, mostly in the service sector, did. Consistent with responses to these changing labor market opportunities, we find that a $1,000 increase in import exposure per worker in a local area led to an increase in the share of low-education immigrants speaking English very well in that area by about half a percentage...	Delia Furtado, Haiyang Kong
8	2020	China's Impact on Regional Employment: Propagation through Supply Chains and Co-agglomeration Pattern This paper directly applies the shift-share instrumental variable framework to study the China shock, aligning perfectly with the project's core empirical domain on trade shocks. It extends the standard methodology by incorporating supply chain propagation and co-agglomeration patterns, providing valuable context on the partial-equilibrium effects identified by such designs. How does import from China affect local labor markets in Japan? We examine this question using commuting zones as regional units, incorporating shock propagation through supply chains, as well as co-agglomeration patterns. Applying the method proposed by Autor, Dorn and Hanson (2013) and Acemoglu, et al. (2016), we investigate the impact on regional manufacturing employment. Employing the input-output table allows us to analyse how the shocks propagate to upstream/downstream industries and how regional impact is related to co-agglomeration patterns. We find that the negative direct effect on local employment is underestimated in previous studies that do not consider regional propagation of...	Yukiko Saito, Shuhei Kainuma, Michal Fabinger
8	2026	Trade and Intergenerational Income Mobility: Theory and Evidence from the U.S ↗ This paper employs a shift-share design using exposure to Chinese import competition, directly aligning with the China shock literature and the project's focus on local labor market effects. It extends the core analysis by examining intergenerational mobility, offering a significant dynamic dimension to the distributional consequences of trade shocks. This paper studies how globalization influences intergenerational income mobility. We develop a dynamic economic geography model with overlapping generations, migration costs, and sectoral persistence. The model shows that trade shocks lower intergenerational mobility in exposed regions by depressing wage growth and restricting opportunities to move across locations and sectors. Exploiting variation in exposure to Chinese import competition across U.S. commuting zones, we provide empirical evidence that regions more exposed to trade experienced significantly lower upward mobility for the 1980--1982 birth cohort, as measured by income in early adulthood relative to parental income. Our...	Kohei Takeda, Italo Colantone, Gianmarco I.P. Ottaviano
8	2024	Exports and Jobs for Inclusive Growth in Cambodia ↗ This paper directly applies the Bartik shift-share instrumental variable design to estimate the labor market effects of trade exposure, aligning closely with the trade shock literature core to the project. It utilizes the standard methodology of combining industry-level shifts with local shares to identify causal impacts on employment and informality, fitting the empirical applications axis. Cambodia's rapid economic growth in the past few decades has coincided with trade liberalization and structural transformation. This growth has been extensively associated with more employment, higher wages, shared prosperity, and poverty reduction. By combining two complementary approaches, the Gravity model and the Bartik model, this paper estimates: (i) the relationship between trade agreements and trade flows, and (ii) the relationship between trade exposure and various local labor market outcomes. Our gravity estimates show that trade agreements between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are positively related with trade flows, and that Cambodia's specific gains from...	Deeksha Kokas, Jaime Roche Rodriguez, Gladys Lopez-Acevedo, et al.
8	2021	The Impact of Local and Foreign Automation on Labor Market Outcomes in Emerging Countries ↗ This paper directly applies the shift-share instrumental variable design to the automation literature, extending the core framework by distinguishing between local and foreign robot adoption in emerging markets. It contributes to the methodological axis by utilizing a shift-share instrument for foreign automation exposure and addresses the empirical application axis concerning the labor market effects of robots. In the XXI century, the labor market effects of automation have gained significant attention from scholars and policymakers alike. Concerns about potential negative effects are particularly relevant in emerging countries, where a rapid acceleration of robot adoption and an increasing involvement in global value chains has been observed in recent years, with the subsequent increase in exposure to foreign competition. This paper estimates the effect of local and foreign robots on labor market outcomes and labor shares using a panel dataset composed of 16 sectors and ten emerging countries from 2008 to 2014. The endogeneity of robots’ adoption is addressed with an instrumental variable...	Luis R. Díaz Pavez, Inmaculada Martínez‐Zarzoso
8	2019	Adoption of Automation Technology and Labor Substitution (Japanese) This paper directly addresses the automation axis of the project by applying the Bartik instrument framework to estimate the labor market effects of robot adoption in Japan, following the methodology of Acemoglu and Restrepo. It contributes to the empirical literature on automation by testing the labor substitution hypothesis and providing cross-country evidence relevant to the task-based model. The threat of reductions in labor demand caused by automation in the manufacturing sector attracts much interest. However, it is pointed out that total labor demand should not decrease because automation in the manufacturing sector is associated with the new demand for labor associated with maintenance inspection services and the increase in productivity is expected to cause new demand for services. An increased demand scenario and decreased demand scenario resulting from automation are both theoretically possible, so further empirical investigation is necessary regarding the implications of both scenarios. Using the data on the number of industrial robots provided by the International...	Daisuke Adachi, Shuhei Kainuma, Daiji Kawaguchi, et al.
8	2023	Automation and Income Inequality in Europe (Deliverable 3.5) ↗ This paper directly addresses the project's empirical application axis by extending the Acemoglu-Restrepo automation framework to European labor markets. It complements the core methodological discussion by applying similar shift-share logic to examine how welfare states mitigate automation-induced inequality. We study the effects of robot penetration on income inequality in 14 European countries between 2006-2018, a period of rapid adoption of robots. We first use the approach proposed by Acemoglu and Restrepo (2022) to show that, similarly to the US, automation reduced hourly wages and employment in Western Europe, but had no significant effect in Eastern Europe, where labor costs have been noticeably lower. We then use the estimated wage and employment shocks as input to the EUROMOD microsimulation model to assess how robot-driven shocks affected household income inequality. Automation widened income inequality in European countries, but its contribution was very small, about one percent of...	Karina Doorley, Jan Gromadzki, Piotr Lewandowski, et al.
8	2025	Robots Replacing Trade Unions: Novel Data and Evidence from Western Europe ↗ This paper is closely related to the automation and robots axis of the project, specifically extending the Acemoglu & Restrepo (2020) framework by examining the political economy consequences of robot adoption on union density. It utilizes granular regional and industry-level data to assess how automation exposure impacts institutional outcomes, aligning with the project's focus on the effects of technology shocks on labor market structures. Labor unions play a crucial role in liberal democracies by influencing labor market and political dynamics, organizing workers demands and linking them to parties. However, their importance has progressively diminished in the last decades. We suggest that technological changeand industrial robotization in particularhas contributed to weakening the role of unions. We produce novel granular data on union density at the sub-national and industry level for 15 countries of western Europe over 2002-2018. Employing these data, we estimate the impact of industrial robot adoption on unionization rates. We find that regions more exposed to automation experience a decrease in union density. The...	Paolo Agnolin, Massimo Anelli, Italo Colantone, et al.
8	2025	US Robot Impacts in Developing Countries: Evidence from Colombian Workers ↗ This paper closely relates to the automation/robots axis by applying the shift-share design to examine how foreign robot adoption affects labor markets in developing countries. It utilizes US robot adoption as the 'foreign shift' component, directly engaging with the methodological extension of Bartik instruments to international contexts and global value chains. <div> This paper examines how robotization in developed countries impacts workers' earnings and <span>labor dynamics in developing countries. Using nearly a decade of Colombian Social Security </span><span>records and US robot adoption data, we provide robust evidence that workers in industries highly </span><span>exposed to US robots experience lower cumulative earnings overall and lower employment for </span><span>older workers and those employed in larger firms. Workers switching firms within the same </span><span>industry avoid earnings losses, while those moving across industries face the largest losses, </span><span>consistent with loss of industry-specific human capital. These...	Adriana Debora Kugler, Maurice Kügler, Rodimiro Rodrigo
8	2023	Robots, tasks, and trade ↗ This paper directly engages with the automation literature by analyzing how robot adoption influences trade patterns, a key intersection of the project's empirical and theoretical axes. It provides relevant insights into the general equilibrium mechanisms linking task-based technological change to international trade, complementing the standard local partial-equilibrium shift-share analyses. We examine the effects of robotization on North–South trade patterns, wages and welfare. The empirical analysis uses ordinary least squares and instrumental-variable regressions exploiting variation in exposure to robots across countries and sectors. Both reveal that greater robot intensity in own production leads to: (i) a rise in imports sourced from less developed countries in the same industry; and (ii) an even stronger increase in exports to those countries. To explain these findings we develop a stylized Ricardian model featuring two-stage production and trade in intermediate and final goods in which robots can take over some tasks previously performed by humans in a subset of...	Erhan Artuç, Paulo Bastos, Bob Rijkers
8	2026	Robots Reinstate, AI Doesn't: Asymmetric Task Creation Across Automation Frontiers * ↗ This paper directly engages with the task-based model and the automation/robots axis of the project, extending the theoretical framework to distinguish between physical and cognitive automation. It utilizes occupation-level exposure indices and empirical diagnostics related to the labor market impacts of technological change, which are central to the researcher's scope. Robot-exposed occupations follow V-shaped wage trajectories-decline then recoverywhile AI-exposed occupations follow L-shapes with no recovery. I develop a twofrontier task model in which the direction of automation and the rate of complementary task creation are jointly determined. Physical automation produces spatially bundled complements-maintenance, monitoring, quality control-because automated and human tasks are co-located , cognitive automation produces fewer complements because its outputs are digital and non-spatial. Calibrating the model to structurally estimated reinstatement rates identifies a complementarity ratio of 4.88: each unit of robot frontier advancement generates...	Carlos Chavez
8	2025	Age-Biased Offshoring and Automation ↗ This paper directly addresses the intersection of automation and offshoring with a focus on how these technologies differentially affect labor demand across age groups, aligning with the task-based model and shift-share instrument applications. It provides relevant empirical evidence on the substitution and complementarity effects of robots and offshoring on routine vs. non-routine tasks, which is central to the theoretical and empirical axes of the project. In this paper, I provide novel evidence on the effects of offshoring and automation on the relative demand for three age groups of workers in 21 industries, covering the entire manufacturing and market service sectors, of 11 advanced countries in 1996–2005. Off- shoring to lower-income countries and industrial robot adoption decreased the demand for the young relative to middle-aged and older workers, while offshoring to high-income countries exerted opposite effects. Results suggest that the relocation to lower-income countries and automation of routine tasks substituted for young workers, who perform primarily such tasks, or complemented (disproportionately) older workers, who perform...	Sotiris Blanas
8	2021	How Does Automation Affect Aggregate Labor Share and Firm Level Economic Outcomes? ↗ [Title only] The title directly addresses the core empirical application of automation and robots, aligning with the Acemoglu & Restrepo (2020) strand of the researcher's project. It also touches on the theoretical axis by linking task-based technological change to firm-level outcomes and aggregate macroeconomic indicators like the labor share. No abstract available.	Berkay Akyapı
8	2024	Robots and Unemployment ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation/robots axis of the project by estimating the causal impact of industrial robots and AI on unemployment using panel data across OECD countries. It provides relevant empirical evidence on heterogeneous effects by education and age, supporting the task-based polarization narrative central to the project's theoretical framework. Investigating the relation between artificial intelligence, robots and unemployment on a panel of 33 OECD countries covering the 2005—2017 period, we find that a 10% increase in the stock of industrial robots is associated with a 0.42 point increase in the unemployment rate. For artificial intelligence (AI), we use patents as a proxy of AI-related technological capabilities and find a positive correlation with the aggregated unemployment rate, albeit statistically weaker than the one found for robots. We then run the regressions on unemployment rates differentiated by education and age, and observe highly heterogeneous effects between groups. For example, the effect of robots is 2.5 times...	Noritaka Kudoh, Hiroaki Miyamoto
8	2023	Skill-Biased Technical Change and Employment in U.S. Manufacturing ↗ This paper is closely related as it directly addresses the task-based framework and automation mechanisms central to the project's theoretical and empirical axes. It also explicitly examines import penetration from China, a key application domain within the shift-share literature, while providing methodological insights into decomposing labor market changes. I propose a new method to decompose employment changes by skill type into changes caused by output, labor supply, production task concentration, and laboraugmenting technology, using market equilibrium conditions within a constant elasticity of substitution production framework. Studying manufacturing industries from 1990 to 2007, I find that labor-augmenting technology, by reducing labor per unit of output, is the leading source of displacement overall. However, a shift toward highskill tasks is even more important in displacing non-college workers, who represent a majority of employment. In applications, I explore the impacts of import penetration from China and susceptibility to...	Mary Kate Batistich
8	2026	The Macroeconomics of Asymmetric Automation: Frontier Technologies, Productivity, and the Labor Share ↗ This paper is closely related as it builds on the task-based model central to the project, specifically contrasting the labor market effects of robot versus AI automation. It utilizes commuting-zone wage data, aligning with the geographic scope and micro-foundations discussed in the automation and shift-share literature. Automation technologies differ in their capacity to generate complementary human tasks. I build a two-frontier growth model in which physical and cognitive automation advance simultaneously but reinstate labor at different rates. The cognitive reinstatement rate is structurally estimated from U.S. commuting-zone wage data. Robot automation generates approximately 31 percent more aggregate productivity per unit of frontier advance than AI, driven almost entirely by differential task creation and reallocation rather than direct displacement. Three macro results follow. First, both frontiers lower the labor share, but robots are 42 percent as damaging as AI per unit of advance. Second...	Carlos Chávez
8	2026	Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work: A Critical Examination of Labor Market Transformation in the Era of Cognitive Automation ↗ [Title only] The title directly addresses the intersection of artificial intelligence and labor market transformation, aligning with the project's theoretical axis on occupation-level exposure to AI and automation shocks. It likely discusses task-based models or AI-capability indices relevant to the shift-share methodology for measuring technology exposure. No abstract available.	MD Sabab Zaman Tanoy
8	2026	The AI Layoff Trap ↗ This paper directly engages with the task-based model framework central to the project, specifically addressing automation-induced labor displacement. It contributes to the theoretical axis by analyzing demand-side externalities and general-equilibrium effects, which aligns with the project's focus on the distinction between partial and aggregate effects in technology shock literature. If AI displaces human workers faster than the economy can reabsorb them, it risks eroding the very consumer demand firms depend on. We show that knowing this is not enough for firms to stop it. In a competitive task-based model of a transitioning economy, each firm captures the full cost saving from automation but bears only a fraction of the demand loss it creates in the product market; the rest falls on rivals. This demand externality traps rational firms in an automation arms race, displacing workers well beyond what is collectively optimal. The resulting loss harms both workers and firm owners. More competition and ``better'' AI amplify the excess; wage adjustments and free entry cannot...	Falk, Brett Hemenway, Tsoukalas, Gerry
8	2026	Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and Employment Dynamics: Evaluating the Balance Between Job Displacement and Job Creation ↗ The paper directly addresses the task-based model and automation literature central to the project, specifically examining AI's impact on routine versus cognitive tasks. It aligns with the theoretical axis by discussing job displacement, polarization, and the distinction between substitution and complementarity effects of technology on labor markets. Abstract The rapid advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has reignited a longstanding economic debate concerning technological unemployment and labor market transformation. While historical technological revolutions have ultimately generated net employment gains, AI differs in its capacity to automate not only routine manual tasks but also cognitive and decision-based functions. This paper examines the net employment effects of AI by analyzing the balance between job displacement and job creation across sectors. It evaluates whether AI primarily substitutes human labor or complements it by enhancing productivity and generating new occupational categories. The study adopts a labor...	Uday Palake
8	2026	Agentic AI and Occupational Displacement: A Multi-Regional Task Exposure Analysis of Emerging Labor Market Disruption ↗ This paper directly extends the task-based model and occupation-level shift-share exposure metrics central to the project's theoretical axis, specifically applying it to emerging Agentic AI technologies. It aligns closely with the automation literature's focus on differential technology shocks across occupations and the distinction between task-level and workflow-level displacement risks. This paper extends the Acemoglu-Restrepo task exposure framework to address the labor market effects of agentic artificial intelligence systems: autonomous AI agents capable of completing entire occupational workflows rather than discrete tasks. Unlike prior automation technologies that substitute for individual subtasks, agentic AI systems execute end-to-end workflows involving multi-step reasoning, tool invocation, and autonomous decision-making, substantially expanding occupational displacement risk beyond what existing task-level analyses capture. We introduce the Agentic Task Exposure (ATE) score, a composite measure computed algorithmically from O*NET task data using calibrated...	Ravish Gupta, Saket Kumar
8	2026	Agentic AI and Occupational Displacement: A Multi-Regional Task Exposure Analysis of Emerging Labor Market Disruption The paper directly extends the Acemoglu-Restrepo task exposure framework, which is central to the project's theoretical and empirical axes on automation. It introduces a novel exposure metric for agentic AI, applying the shift-share logic to predict occupational displacement across specific US regions, thus aligning closely with the methodological and application domains of the research project. This paper extends the Acemoglu-Restrepo task exposure framework to address the labor market effects of agentic artificial intelligence systems: autonomous AI agents capable of completing entire occupational workflows rather than discrete tasks. Unlike prior automation technologies that substitute for individual subtasks, agentic AI systems execute end-to-end workflows involving multi-step reasoning, tool invocation, and autonomous decision-making, substantially expanding occupational displacement risk beyond what existing task-level analyses capture. We introduce the Agentic Task Exposure (ATE) score, a composite measure computed algorithmically from O*NET task data using calibrated...	Ravish Gupta, Saket Kumar
8	2016	Immigration, Occupations, and Local Labor Market Outcomes: Theory and Evidence from the United States This paper is closely related to the immigration axis of the project, as it directly addresses the labor market effects of immigration using local variation. It complements the Bartik literature by providing structural estimates that help bridge the gap between local partial-equilibrium effects and aggregate general-equilibrium outcomes. The last decades have witnessed a large increase in the share of immigrants in the U.S. labor force. How has this wave of immigration affected jobs and wages of U.S. workers? We first study empirically the impact of immigrants on the allocation and wages of domestic workers across occupations and space, exploiting local labor market variation. We find evidence of an occupation crowding-in effect: an increase in immigrants into an occupation increases the share of domestic workers in those occupations. Motivated by this and other facts that we document, we consider an assignment model with multiple regions, occupations, labor groups, and imperfectly substitutable domestic and immigrant...	Lin Tian, Jonathan Vogel, Gordon Hanson, et al.
8	2024	The Effects of Immigration on Native Employment — Evidence from Isolated and Integrated Ethnic Enclaves in Germany ↗ [Title only] This paper directly addresses the immigration domain of the researcher's project, specifically examining ethnic enclaves which relate to the 'enclave instrument' methodology used in shift-share designs like Card (2001). It provides empirical evidence on the local labor market effects of immigration on native employment, a core application area for Bartik-style instruments in this field. No abstract available.	Ahmed S. Rahman, Ilya Kukaev
8	2020	Wage and Employment Effects of Immigration: Evidence from Korea ↗ This paper is closely related to the immigration application axis of the project, as it directly examines the labor market effects of immigration using educational and occupational heterogeneity, a key theme in the shift-share literature (e.g., Card 2001). The analysis of substitution and occupational overlap provides relevant empirical context for understanding how immigrant inflows affect native wages and employment across different skill groups. This paper studies the impact of immigration on native labor market outcomes in Korea. We exploit the variation in immigration flows in an education-experience cell and find that, on average, immigration has no harmful effect on the wages or employment of native workers. However, there is great heterogeneity in the wage effects across education groups: high school dropouts suffer from the adverse effects, whereas the effects for college graduates are positive. We find the potential explanation for these differential effects in the suggestive evidence on the degree of substitution. Specifically, we examine the similarity of occupational distribution between natives and immigrants. While the...	Hyejin Kim
8	2013	Immigrants' and Native Workers: New Analysis on Longitudinal Data This paper directly addresses the immigration axis of the project by examining the labor market effects of immigrant inflows on native workers, a core application of shift-share designs like Card's enclave instrument. While it uses a distinct quasi-experimental strategy based on refugee dispersal rather than a traditional Bartik instrument, it provides crucial empirical context and evidence on the mechanisms (occupational mobility, task content) central to the project's theoretical framework. Using longitudinal data on the universe of workers in Denmark during the period 1991-2008 we track the labor market outcomes of low skilled natives in response to an exogenous inflow of low skilled immigrants. We innovate on previous identification strategies by considering immigrants distributed across municipalities by a refugee dispersal policy in place between 1986 and 1998. We find that an increase in the supply of refugee-country immigrants pushed less educated native workers (especially the young and low-tenured ones) to pursue less manual-intensive occupations. As a result immigration had positive effects on native unskilled wages, employment and occupational mobility.	Mette Foged, Giovanni Peri
8	2011	The Impact of New Immigration in native Wages: A Cross-occupation Analysis of a Small Open Economy This paper is closely related as it applies a shift-share-like instrumental variable strategy to estimate the local labor market effects of immigration on native wages. It aligns with the project's empirical applications axis by utilizing occupation-level exposure instruments and addressing the endogeneity between immigrant inflows and local labor market outcomes. This paper examines how immigration affects native wages by exploiting an unexpected episode of immigrant influx. The episode happened in Hong Kong, when its government unexpectedly relaxed the restriction on immigration from mainland China in 1993, resulting in a seven-fold increase in the net inflow of Chinese immigrants between 1992 and 1993. We use variation in the employment share of immigrants across occupations for identification. To tackle endogeneity between wages and immigrant inflows across occupations, we use Welch’s (1999) congruence indices, which capture the degree of substitutability between workers from different skill groups, to construct instruments for the prevalence of...	Heiwai Tang, Stan Hok‐Wui Wong
8	2025	The Dynamic Impact of Refugee Immigration on Native Workers ↗ [Title only] This title directly addresses the immigration application axis of the project, specifically focusing on native worker outcomes which are central to the Card (2001) and enclave instrument literature. The 'dynamic' aspect suggests an extension of standard shift-share analyses to temporal effects, a common methodological evolution in this field. No abstract available.	Katia Gallegos Torres, Katrin Sommerfeld
8	2021	Regional Consumption Responses and the Aggregate Fiscal Multiplier ↗ This paper closely relates to the fiscal policy axis of the project, which examines regional government spending instruments and the estimation of fiscal multipliers. It addresses the core theoretical concern of bridging the gap between local partial-equilibrium effects and aggregate general-equilibrium outcomes through a multi-region structural model. We use regional variation in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (2009–12) to analyse the effect of government spending on consumer spending. Our consumption data come from household-level retail purchases in the Nielsen scanner data and auto purchases from Equifax credit balances. We estimate that a $1 increase in county-level government spending increases local non-durable consumer spending by $0.29 and local auto spending by $0.09. We translate the regional consumption responses to an aggregate fiscal multiplier using a multi-region, new Keynesian model with heterogeneous agents, incomplete markets, and trade linkages. Our model is consistent with the estimated positive local...	M. Saif Mehkari, William Daniel Dupor, Marios Karabarbounis, et al.
8	2020	Short and Long-Run Labor Market Effects of Developing Country Exports: Evidence from Bangladesh This paper employs a shift-share instrument by constructing export demand exposure using OECD import shares as weights, a methodology directly parallel to the China shock literature central to the project. It also explicitly contrasts local partial-equilibrium estimates with general-equilibrium implications, addressing a key theoretical concern in the researcher's scope regarding the distinction between local and aggregate effects. This paper studies how a positive export \n shock -- the sharp increase in garment-sector exports that \n began at the end of the Multifibre Arrangement (MFA) -- \n spread through Bangladesh's labor markets. Although the \n end of the MFA was arguably exogenous to Bangladesh, the \n authors instrument export demand with OECD imports to ensure \n identification. The paper compares estimates of the local \n labor market effects (wages and informality) and estimates \n from wage equations that reflect the predictions from \n long-run, general-equilibrium neoclassical trade theory. As \n in other studies, this paper finds that the export shock was \n localized both in terms of sector and...	Raymond Robertson, Deeksha Kokas, Diego Cardozo, et al.
8	2022	Routinization, Within-Occupation Task Changes and Long-Run Employment Dynamics ↗ [Title only] The paper's focus on routinization and within-occupation task changes directly engages the theoretical task-based model that underpins the automation and polarization literature central to the project's theoretical axis. It likely provides granular evidence on the mechanisms of technological displacement, which complements the shift-share designs used to measure occupational exposure to automation. No abstract available.	Davide Consoli, Giovanni Marin, Francesco Vona, et al.
8	2015	Job polarisation and earnings inequality in Australia This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis of the project by providing empirical evidence for the routine task intensity (RTI) framework that underlies occupation-level shift-share designs. It validates the mechanism of job polarization driven by technological changes, which is a core component of the automation and task-based literature cited in the project scope. We investigate changes in the occupation structure of employment in Australia between 1966 and 2011, and the effect of these changes on the earnings distribution. There has been substantial growth in the employment share of high skill jobs throughout this period. In the 1980s and 1990s the share of middle skill jobs declined, and the share of low skill jobs rose – consistent with what has become known as job polarisation. In the 1970s and 2000s, however, employment shares of both middle and low skill jobs decreased. Changes in the structure of employment by occupation between 1966 and 2011 are consistent with the loss of jobs that were high in routine task intensity. We find that the...	Michael Coelli, Jeff Borland
8	2026	Measuring the Intensive Margin of Work: Task Shares and Concentration ↗ This paper provides a refined statistical framework for measuring task shares, which are fundamental weights in constructing Bartik-like exposure indices for technologies such as AI and automation. It directly supports the project's theoretical axis on task-based models and the empirical applications concerning new technological shocks, offering improved diagnostics for the exposure measures used in shift-share designs. Are jobs diffuse bundles of activities, or are they concentrated on a small core? This paper develops a statistical framework to measure the intensive margin of work using task-frequency survey responses from ONET. Using categorical occurrence data for 12,495 tasks in ONET 29.0, we construct within-occupation estimators of task flows and task shares that sum to one. Under a within-occupation homogeneous task-duration assumption, these shares can be interpreted as time allocations across tasks. We propagate sampling uncertainty from the underlying survey responses to obtain fully specified estimators of task flows and task shares, and provide diagnostic evidence on the robustness of the...	Pierre Bouquet, Yossi Sheffi
8	2026	Hungary 2030: Structural Exposure of Administrative and Routine Occupations to AI ↗ This paper directly implements the theoretical axis of the project by constructing an AI-exposure index based on task content, analogous to the occupation-level shift-share designs discussed. It applies the task-based framework to a specific national context, providing empirical measures of structural exposure to technology shocks relevant to the automation literature. Magyarország 2030: Az adminisztratív és rutinszerű munkakörök automatizálhatósági kockázata (2026–2030). This Zenodo record provides a reproducible working paper and supporting materials that quantify the structural exposure of Hungarian occupations to AI-driven task automation. The contribution is a transparent four-component AI Exposure Index integrating: (T) technical automatability, (R) routine intensity, (K) creativity requirement, and (S) social interaction requirement, combined with a Hungary-specific sector correction factor (M_sector). The methodology supports two execution modes: (i) an open-data pipeline using only publicly accessible sources and (ii) an enhanced pipeline that...	Omri Bankuti
8	2025	Job Transformation, Specialization, and the Labor Market Effects of AI ↗ [Title only] This title directly addresses the theoretical axis concerning AI-capability indices and LLM task-exposure measures within the task-based model framework. It likely analyzes how AI adoption reshapes labor markets through specialization, aligning closely with the project's interest in occupation-level exposure indices and the shift from routine to non-routine tasks. No abstract available.	Lukas B. Freund, Lukas Friedrich Mann
8	2026	Global Automation Atlas This paper directly addresses the project's theoretical axis by developing a new task-based exposure measure for automation that distinguishes between labor-substituting and augmenting channels across countries. It complements the core shift-share design literature by offering a refined, country-specific approach to measuring technology exposure, which is essential for understanding the heterogeneity in automation effects discussed in the Acemoglu & Restrepo framework. Automation affects the labour content of work differently across different contexts. Yet, most existing exposure measures assign fixed scores to tasks or occupations, limiting comparisons of automation exposure across countries. We develop a task-based and country-specific approach to classify automation exposure across the world to disentangle labor-substituting from labor-augmenting automation, the relevant technology channel, and the material role of AI. Our measure spans 124 countries, generating an atlas of 2.33 million task-country labels for economies covering 99% of world population and GDP. We present five descriptive results. First, exposure is highly uneven, ranging from 3.3% of...	Prashant Garg, Tommaso Crosta, Jasmin Baier
8	2026	Stable Geometry, Reversing Poles: The Bipolar Structure of AI Occupational Substitutability and Its Decade-Scale Inversion ↗ This paper directly advances the theoretical axis of the project by proposing a novel, LLM-based measure of AI occupational task exposure, addressing the specific literature on AI-capability indices and task-exposure measures. It provides a refined micro-level decomposition of occupations that complements the shift-share framework by offering a more granular instrument for predicting local labor market impacts of AI adoption. Empirical research on the labor-market impact of artificial intelligence has converged, since Frey and Osborne (2017), on a continuous-gradient representation in which each occupation is assigned a real-valued exposure score on [0,1] obtained by linear aggregation across capability dimensions. This continuity is rarely articulated as an assumption and has not been tested at the micro-action level where substitution actually occurs. We decompose 1,961 O*NET Detailed Work Activities into 15,817 micro-actions using a multi-agent LLM pipeline with 31-expert HITL calibration, then project the DWA-level Occupational Automation Index from our prior work onto a 7-macro semantic typology. The result...	Shuyao Gao, Minghao Huang
8	2025	Technology and Labor Markets: Past, Present, and Future; Evidence from Two Centuries of Innovation ↗ This paper directly addresses the theoretical axis of the project by constructing novel task-exposure measures for occupations using large language models, aligning with the shift-share framework's application to technology shocks. It provides empirical evidence on how technology shifts labor demand across occupations, which is central to the task-based model and occupation-level Bartik instruments discussed in the project. We use recent advances in natural language processing and large language models to construct novel measures of technology exposure for workers that span almost two centuries. Combining our measures with Census data on occupation employment, we show that technological progress over the 20th century has led to economically meaningful shifts in labor demand across occupations: it has consistently increased demand for occupations with higher education requirements, occupations that pay higher wages, and occupations with a greater fraction of female workers. Using these insights and a calibrated model, we then explore different scenarios for how advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are...	Huben Liu, Dimitris Papanikolaou, Lawrence Schmidt, et al.
8	2023	New Technologies and Jobs in Europe ↗ This paper directly addresses the automation and new technologies axis by examining the labor market effects of AI exposure across European occupations. It provides relevant empirical evidence on employment and wage outcomes that aligns with the task-based framework and shift-share methodologies discussed in the project. We examine the link between labour market developments and new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and software in 16 European countries over the period 2011- 2019. Using data for occupations at the 3-digit level in Europe, we find that on average employment shares have increased in occupations more exposed to AI. This is particularly the case for occupations with a relatively higher proportion of younger and skilled workers. This evidence is in line with the Skill Biased Technological Change theory. While there exists heterogeneity across countries, only very few countries show a decline in employment shares of occupations more exposed to AI-enabled automation. Country...	Stefania Albanesi, António Dias da Silva, Juan F. Jimeno, et al.
8	2026	Vulnerabilidad de Empleos a la Inteligencia Artificial en España: Dataset, Metodología y Dashboard Interactivo (v20) ↗ This work directly extends the theoretical axis of the project by applying modern LLM-based task-exposure measures (Eloundou et al. 2023) to a national dataset, serving as a key empirical reference for the methodology of constructing occupation-level AI exposure indices. It complements the study's focus on the task-based model and the distinction between technical exposure and economic adoption, providing a contemporary example of how shift-share-like exposure metrics are operationalized for new technologies. AI Exposure of Jobs in Spain — Complete Dataset, Methodology & Interactive Dashboard (v20) This deposit contains the complete dataset, methodology, and interactive visualisation tool for assessing the theoretical exposure of 502 Spanish occupations to artificial intelligence. The analysis covers 22.46 million workers (EPA Q4 2025, INE) and assigns each occupation a calibrated exposure score on a 0–10 scale, cross-referenced with salary data, EU AI Act risk classification, and impact typology. The interactive dashboard is available at: https://empleo-ai.netlify.app/ Dataset The core dataset (spain_502_v7_sectorfixed.json) contains 502 records corresponding to the complete CNO-11 occupational...	Alvaro de Nicolas, miguel sureda
8	2026	Replication Data for: 'Automation and Rent Dissipation: Implications for Wages, Inequality, and Productivity' ↗ This dataset provides the replication materials for a central paper in the automation literature that utilizes shift-share instruments to analyze the labor market effects of robot adoption. It is directly relevant to the empirical applications and methodological discussion of automation-based Bartik instruments within the project. The data and programs replicate tables and figures from "Automation and Rent Dissipation: Implications for Wages, Inequality, and Productivity," by Acemoglu and Restrepo. Please see the Instructions file for additional details. The files are too large to host on the Harvard Dataverse. They are available to download here: https://hu.sharepoint.com/:f:/s/HarvardEconomicsDatasets/IgAS2syg4oNPT5rMcMCfFaUFAV2E3R1SxX5XtCREWgrAtAE?e=7LJ5cJ	Daron Acemoglu, Pascual Restrepo
8	2023	Design-Based Identification with Formula Instruments: A Review ↗ This paper provides a methodological review of formula instruments, specifically focusing on the identification and econometric tools for shift-share designs central to the project. It directly addresses the methodological axis by contrasting design-based approaches with alternative strategies, offering relevant context for understanding the identification frameworks discussed in the research project. Many studies in economics use instruments or treatments which combine a set of exogenous shocks with other predetermined variables by a known formula. Examples include shift-share instruments and measures of social or spatial spillovers. We review recent econometric tools for this setting, which leverage the assignment process of the exogenous shocks and the structure of the formula for identification. We compare this design-based approach with conventional estimation strategies based on conditional unconfoundedness, and contrast it with alternative strategies that leverage a model for unobservables.	Kirill Borusyak, Peter Hull, Xavier Jaravel
8	2026	<p>Resolving the Automation Paradox: Falling Labor Share, Rising Wages</p> ↗ [Title only] This paper addresses the core macroeconomic tension between automation-driven productivity gains and stagnant labor shares, directly engaging with the task-based models underpinning the robot adoption literature. It likely utilizes or critiques the theoretical framework associated with Acemoglu & Restrepo (2020), making it highly relevant to the project's automation and theoretical axes. No abstract available.	David Autor, BN Kausik

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