PRIN 2022 - Automation, Trade, and Global Value Chains: New Empirical Evidence and Theory Development
The emergence of new technologies enabling automation and digitalization represents a fundamental technological shift, which can mark profound transformations in socio-economic systems. At the same time, the growing pace of globalization in the form of wider and longer global value chains is also likely to affect the organization and the distribution of the production processes across firms and countries. Both processes entail threats and opportunities for workers, firms and countries. On the one hand, increasing automation could speed up the process of polarization in the labour market and concentration in firms market shares. On the other hand, the interaction of automation and internationalization could open up new opportunities for firms and countries within the worldwide organization of the production processes. The recent COVID-19 pandemic recession has made even clearer that the evolution of technological knowledge together with obstacles to trade are likely to generate winners as well as losers between and within countries.
The project will look at some of these threats and opportunities starting from the working hypothesis of the mutual interaction between the generation of new technological knowledge and activities of the firms carried out on a global scale. In this respect, the new frontier of research has not yet explored all the implications of the connections between the two. We will start from the general conjecture that the technologies underpinning the “factory of the future” as profiled by the Industry 4.0 paradigm, i.e. Internet of Things, big data, cloud, robotics, artificial intelligence, and additive manufacturing, have the potential to deeply transform the economy. We will have a fresh look at the main actors involved in the production and diffusion of these technologies, and their consequences for workers and firms in terms of wage structure, innovation propensity and participation in international markets. Automation technologies can be sourced both domestically and in foreign markets, through imports, and they can possibly diffuse across sectors through backward or forward linkages. This may impact on innovation activities as well as on products quality, thus enhancing the international competitiveness of firms and countries. Being exposed to trade also implies being in competition especially with low wage countries: this may further stimulate automation adoption as a way to increase productivity. Finally, the diffusion of automation across backward and forward sectors will offer new opportunities for changes in the international organization of production. In some cases, it might force an upgrading process on subcontractors. The specific form of upgrading that firms in the global value chains pursue will depend on how this specific technological window of opportunity interacts with opportunities emerging in the demand and institutional domains, as well as the specific governance form of the network.
ENTE PROMOTORE: Unione Europea - MUR
NOME PROGETTO: PRIN 2022 Automation, Trade, and Global Value Chains: New Empirical Evidence and Theory Development; COD. MUR: 2022ACJ2WS
PERIODO E DURATA: 14/10/2023 – 13/10/2025
FINANZIAMENTO: Missione 4 “Istruzione e Ricerca” del Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza ed in particolare la componente C2 – investimento 1.1, Fondo per il Programma Nazionale di Ricerca e Progetti di Rilevante Interesse Nazionale (PRIN) – del Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza, dedicata ai Progetti di ricerca di Rilevante Interesse Nazionale - CUP: J53D23004320006
COORDINATORE: Prof. Daniele Moschella, Scuola Superiore di Studi Universitari e Perfezionamento Sant'Anna
REFERENTI SSSA: Prof. Daniele Moschella