Computational experiments show the emergence of technological unemployment in the long run with a high pace of intangible digital investments. These results are used to inform the enrichment of the agent-based macro-model Eurace that we employ to assess the long-term impact on unemployment of digital investments.
Similarly, both measures of productivity growth are correlated with a combination of both tangible and intangible investments which include information and communication technologies and software and database. Results show a significant correlation between intangible investments and both labor and total factor productivity in the period after the 2008 financial crisis. On the empirical side, we present a cross-country empirical analysis assessing the correlation between the growth rate of both tangible and intangible investments and different measures of productivity growth. The contribution of this paper is on the empirical and the modelling sides.
Various observers argue that we could rapidly approach a technological singularity leading to explosive economic growth. Intangible digital assets, like software solutions, Web services, and more recently deep learning algorithms, artificial intelligence, and digital platforms, have been increasingly adopted thanks to the diffusion and advancements of information and communication technologies. For the last 30 years, the economy has been undergoing a massive digital transformation.