Abstract
This chapter aims to guide the reader in the analysis of some of the main themes proposed by the debate related to the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). First, we discuss the impact of the 4IR on employment by reviewing the results of the relevant economic literature, drawing some suggestions for future research. Second, we review some of the policies developed by governments to support the digital revolution. We argue that while Industry 4.0-type policies are common to all advanced countries, policies in favour of digital technologies in the service sector are more fragmented, difficult to implement, and face a stronger resistance from workers. We finish the paper with a discussion of the main policy issues related to the workers and the labour market, with a focus on robot tax, shared robot ownership, and universal basic income. We conclude by emphasizing that while policies in favour of machines are widespread and supported by wide social consensus, effective polices in favour of workers are much weaker and still unable to mitigate the negative effects of the digital revolution.
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Notes
- 1.
The first was characterized by mechanical production facilities and began in Britain in the 1780s with the help of water and steam power. The second introduced and developed mass production with the help of electrical energy, particularly in the early twentieth century. The third began in the 1970s and was characterized by the use of electronic and IT systems that further automated production.
- 2.
The term Industrie 4.0 was used for the first time during the 2011 Hannover Fair (Schwab 2016).
- 3.
Our computation based on EU-KLEMS, OECD-STAN and BLS data.
- 4.
An industrial robot can be defined as “an automatically controlled, reprogrammable, multipurpose manipulator programmable in three or more axes, which can be either fixed in place or mobile for use in industrial automation applications” (IFR 2017, p. 32).
- 5.
Also, “smart” is very popular. It is so popular that recently the EU, with perhaps excessive emphasis, labelled a programme Smart Anything Everywhere (SAE)!
- 6.
A recent survey can be found in European Commission (2017).
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Paba, S., Solinas, G. (2018). In Favour of Machines (But Not Forgetting the Workers): Some Considerations on the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In: Ales, E., Curzi, Y., Fabbri, T., Rymkevich, O., Senatori, I., Solinas, G. (eds) Working in Digital and Smart Organizations. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77329-2_4
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