While the effects of innovation on employment have been a controversial issue in economic literature for several years, this economic puzzle is particularly relevant nowadays. We are witnessing tremendous technological developments which threaten to disrupt the labour market, due to their potential for significantly automating human labour. As such, this paper presents a qualitative study of the dynamics underlying the relationship between innovation and employment, using an agent-based model developed in Python. The model represents an economy populated by firms able to perform either Product Innovation (leading to the discovery of new tasks, which require human labour) or Process Innovation (leading to the automation of tasks previously performed by humans). The analysis led to three major conclusions, valid in this context. The first takeaway is that the Employment Rate in a given economy is dependent on the automation potential of the tasks in that economy and dependent on the type of innovation performed by firms in that economy (with Product Innovation having a positive effect on employment and Process Innovation having a negative effect). Second, in any given economy, if firms’ propensity for product and process innovation, as well as the automation potential of their tasks are stable over time, the Employment Rate in that economy will tend towards stability over time. The third conclusion is that higher levels of Process Innovation and lower levels of Product Innovation, lead to a more intense decline of wage shares and to a wider gap between employee productivity growth and wage growth.

中文翻译：

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创新与就业：基于代理的方法

尽管创新对就业的影响在经济文献中一直是有争议的问题，但如今这种经济难题尤为重要。我们正在目睹巨大的技术发展，由于它们极大地使人类劳动自动化，因此有可能破坏劳动力市场。因此，本文使用在Python中开发的基于代理的模型，对创新和就业之间的关系背后的动力学进行了定性研究。该模型表示一种经济，该经济由能够执行产品创新（导致发现需要人工的新任务的公司）或流程创新（导致先前由人类执行的任务的自动化）的公司构成。分析得出三个主要结论，在这种情况下有效。首先要说明的是，给定经济体中的就业率取决于该经济体中任务的自动化潜力，并取决于该经济体中企业进行的创新类型（产品创新对就业和流程创新产生积极影响具有负面影响）。其次，在任何给定的经济中，如果公司的产品和流程创新倾向以及其任务的自动化潜力随着时间的推移而稳定，那么该经济体中的就业率将随着时间的流逝趋于稳定。第三个结论是，较高的流程创新水平和较低的产品创新水平会导致工资份额下降更为剧烈，并导致员工生产率增长与工资增长之间的差距更大。