Technological paradigms, labour creation and destruction in a multi-sector agent-based model

• Published in: Research policy 2022-12, Vol.51 (10), p.104565, Article 104565
• Main Authors: Dosi, G., Pereira, M.C., Roventini, A., Virgillito, M.E.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Consumption patterns; Structural change; Technical change; Technological unemployment
• ISSN: 0048-7333; 1873-7625
• DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2022.104565

This paper presents an agent-based model (ABM) of endogenous arrival of technological paradigms and new sectors entailing different patterns of labour creation and destruction, as well as of consumption dynamics. The model, building on the labour-augmented K+S ABM, addresses the long-term patterns of labour demand emerging from heterogeneous forms of technical change. It provides a multi-level, integrated perspective on so called scenarios of the future of work, currently often restricted or to firm-level or to short-time sectoral analyses, and studies the conditions under which labour creation and destruction tend to balance. It is a relatively fair and stable distribution of income granted by a Fordist-type of regulation of the labour market that guarantees that the model never reaches stages of persistent technological unemployment. On the contrary, a systematic mismatch between production and consumption spheres emerges out of a Competitive (post-Fordist) wage-labour nexus, wherein the labour shedding effect of process innovation tends to prevail over the labour creating effect of product innovation. •An agent-based model of endogenous arrival of technological paradigms and new sectors.•Hierarchical needs satisfaction and class-based consumption behaviour.•It provides a multi-level, integrated perspective on scenarios of the future of work.•A fair distribution of income guarantees the lack of technological unemployment.•Labour destruction prevails over labour creation under a Competitive wage-labour nexus.