Technology, Innovation, and Labor

Technology, Innovation, and Labor is a compact 6-week advanced special topic on how technological change reshapes labor markets. The course studies technology as a labor-market force: it changes the tasks firms demand, the skills workers supply, the way firms organize production and hiring, and the equilibrium distribution of wages, employment, mobility, rents, and welfare.

The course exists because technology is not only a source of productivity growth or an innovation-policy topic. It is also a labor-economics object. Automation, AI, digital platforms, and innovation alter labor demand, worker adjustment, firm organization, inequality, institutions, and the value of work itself. The goal is to turn a fast-moving and often diffuse literature into a disciplined labor course organized around tasks, skills, firm response, market equilibrium, and worker welfare.

Why This Is A Labor Special Topic¶

Labor I supplies the worker-side foundations: human capital, labor supply, wage determination, inequality, amenities, mobility, and policy. Labor II supplies the firm and market architecture: labor demand, internal labor markets, search, wage-setting, monopsony, institutions, and shocks. This course sits at their intersection. It asks how technology changes what firms want workers to do, how workers can adjust, and how markets distribute the gains and losses.

Prerequisites¶

• Labor I or a strong equivalent in worker-side labor economics

• Labor II or readiness to work with labor demand, firm behavior, frictions, and equilibrium adjustment

• Graduate microeconomic theory

• Applied econometrics and comfort reading modern empirical labor papers

• Prior innovation, industrial organization, or AI exposure is useful but not required

What Students Will Be Able To Do¶

By the end of the course, students should be able to:

1. map technologies into tasks, skills, occupations, firms, and labor-market outcomes;

2. distinguish displacement, augmentation, reinstatement, diffusion, and equilibrium incidence;

3. analyze technology as a demand-side shock, a supply-side adjustment problem, and a market-level force;

4. evaluate evidence on automation, AI, digital platforms, firm adoption, worker reallocation, and inequality;

5. design technology-and-labor research questions with clear exposure measures, mechanisms, counterfactuals, and welfare objects.

Course Format¶

Technology, Innovation, and Labor is designed as a 6-week compact advanced special topic for PhD students and strong advanced MA students. It is suitable for a half-semester elective, intensive module, or graduate reading group. The course is reading-heavy and research-oriented: each week centers on one labor-market mechanism, one empirical design problem, and one frontier research margin.

Weekly chapters use the portfolio’s special-topics structure: Bridge, Field Core, Research Lab, Methods Box, reading ladder, exercises or discussion prompts, reproducibility note, and slide companion note. Special-topics chapters include a visible Core points box near the top; extension boxes are optional rather than a default requirement.

Weekly Sequence¶

1. Technology, tasks, and labor-market adjustment. The course opens with the task framework and the main labor-market objects: task content, labor demand, labor supply adjustment, employment, wages, job quality, and welfare.

2. Automation, AI, and labor demand. Students study how robots, software, AI, and generative AI shift demand across tasks, occupations, establishments, and local labor markets.

3. Worker adjustment, skills, training, and career transitions. The course turns to the supply side: skill portability, training, occupational mobility, learning, career risk, and the welfare cost of adjustment.

4. Firms, hiring, management, and organizational response. Students examine how firms adopt technology, reorganize production, change hiring and management, redesign jobs, and use digital platforms or algorithmic tools.

5. Technology, inequality, market structure, and labor-market institutions. The course studies wage polarization, firm rents, labor share, market power, bargaining institutions, platform rules, and policy incidence.

6. Synthesis, frontier questions, and student research designs. The final week converts the sequence into research designs using task measures, vacancy data, patents, firm adoption, worker panels, experiments, and exposure designs.

Course Map¶

• Foundational: Week 1 defines the task-based vocabulary and the course’s demand, supply, and equilibrium map.

• Demand-side: Week 2 studies automation, AI, and labor demand shifts.

• Worker-adjustment focused: Week 3 studies skills, training, occupational mobility, and career transitions.

• Firm and organization focused: Week 4 studies adoption, hiring, management, digital platforms, and job redesign.

• Inequality and institution focused: Week 5 studies distribution, rents, market power, bargaining, regulation, and worker welfare.

• Synthesis and research design: Week 6 turns the course into frontier questions and student research designs.

Research Orientation¶

This course is aimed at students who want to move beyond slogans about automation or AI and ask disciplined labor questions about exposure, mechanism, heterogeneity, equilibrium, and welfare. A successful project in this course starts from a labor-market outcome, names the technology margin, explains the worker or firm response, and states the counterfactual needed to evaluate wages, employment, mobility, inequality, job quality, or worker welfare.