Original title: Reemployment is not recovery: automation and task-specific human capital
Authors: Hansak, Alexander
Document type: Research reports
Year: 2026
Language: eng
Series: CERGE-EI Working Paper Series, volume: 822
Abstract: This paper develops a quantitative task-based model of automation in which firms choose an endogenous automation cutoff and workers reallocate across frictional task-specific labor markets. Tasks differ in automation suitability, and workers carry task-specific human capital that is only imperfectly portable after displacement. The model is calibrated to a quarterly U.S. economy and used to study automation-productivity shocks, task-ladder shifts with new-task creation, and repeated automation waves. Across experiments, automation raises long-run output and does not generate permanent unemployment. Its main cost is instead transitional and distributional: workers at the old automation frontier are reemployed quickly, but suffer persistent human-capital losses when reallocation occurs through unemployment and into distant tasks. New tasks reinstate labor demand in the long run, but only after vacancies are posted and employment is rebuilt. Policy experiments show that skill-transfer programs reduce productive scarring, while unemployment insurance provides consumption insurance but leaves human-capital losses largely unchanged.
Keywords: automation; task reallocation; task-specific human capital
Project no.: EH23_025/0008693
Funding provider: GA MŠk

Institution: Economics Institute AS ČR (web)
Document availability information: Fulltext is available at external website.
External URL: https://www.cerge-ei.cz/pdf/wp/Wp822.pdf
Original record: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0379727

Permalink: http://www.nusl.cz/ntk/nusl-778757


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