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on Information and Communication Technologies |
| By: | Costanza Bosone; Leonardo Gambacorta; Paolo Giudici; Enisse Kharroubi; Ulf Lewrick |
| Abstract: | We study how robot adoption and investment in information and communication technologies (ICT) jointly shape sectoral employment across 20 European Union (EU) countries over the period 1995-2020. Using a cross-sectional regression design that interacts changes in robot adoption with ICT investment, we find that increases in robot adoption are associated with higher employment in sectors that either entered the period without robots or invested little in ICT. By contrast, robot adoption is associated with lower employment in sectors that initially had some robots and high ICT investment. These findings highlight the importance of both initial conditions and complementary technology investment in shaping labour-market outcomes, suggesting that the employment effects of technology are highly context-dependent. |
| Keywords: | ICT capital, employment, labour market, technology adoption, European Union |
| JEL: | E23 O33 J24 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bis:biswps:1334 |
| By: | Burak Uras (Williams College); Jose Gabriel Carreno (Central Bank of Chile); Harry Huizinga (Tilburg University); Ata Can Bertay (Sabanci University) |
| Abstract: | "On average wages in the finance industry are higher compared to the rest of the economy. Two explanations suggested for this finance wage premium are (1) the positive correlation between risk-taking and wages, and (2) industry differences in ICT intensity. Using a comprehensive worker-firm panel dataset for the Netherlands, we estimate wage models with additive worker and firm fixed effects, and estimate the finance wage premium as the average of the firm fixed effects in an industry. We then relate the estimated cross-section of firm fixed effects to a range of firm charac- teristics, and find that ICT investment, the average level of educational attainment at a firm and the complementarity of the two are the main drivers of the finance wage premium, while firm risk only makes a small contribution." |
| Keywords: | finance wage premium, worker-firm panels, ICT, firm risk |
| JEL: | J24 J31 |
| Date: | 2026–02–13 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wil:wileco:2026_105 |
| By: | Lopez-Acevedo, Gladys; Robertson, Raymond; Tariq, Adeel |
| Abstract: | Technological change has historically widened or preserved gender gaps in labor market outcomes in favor of men. The World Bank’s Digital Transformation and Its Role in Expanding Women’s Economic Opportunities in Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon provided a comprehensive diagnostic of the digital landscape facing women in the Mashreq. The study documented large gender gaps in access, skills, and use; identified infrastructure, regulatory, and social constraints; and outlined policy priorities to make digitalization more inclusive. This paper builds directly on that foundation by developing a formal framework that treats digital technology as potentially gender-biased technical change, and by empirically testing whether digital adoption is differentially associated with women’s labor market outcomes. Using latent indexes of digital skills and digital use constructed from the flagship survey data, the paper shows that digital technology is more strongly associated with women’s labor force participation, sector-specific earnings, and key mediating factors—such as productive internet use, online safety behavior, and the easing of care-related constraints—than with corresponding outcomes for men. By linking these patterns to a dual-economy perspective on structural transformation, the paper reframes digitalization not merely as a tool for inclusion, but as a mechanism that may shift both labor demand and labor supply in ways that favor women in low-participation settings such as the Mashreq. |
| Date: | 2026–03–16 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:11332 |
| By: | Abdulkadri, Abdullahi; Leon, Daniel; Jones, Francis; Skerrette, Nyasha; Gonzales, Candice |
| Abstract: | Labour productivity has been on a declining trend in the Caribbean. An examination of this trend revealed a growing concern of skills mismatch in the labour market. At the same time, youth unemployment is high in many countries, with young women and girls twice as likely not to be in education, employment or training. These are troubling signs for human capital formation at a time when Caribbean economies are experiencing low growth, the global economy is becoming increasingly knowledge-based, and a new tariff regime is threatening global trade. In this study, we identify falling quality of education and the inadequate preparedness of school leavers and graduates for the world of work as notable challenges to human capital formation in the Caribbean. We also identify a role for productive development policies to drive transformation by creating an enabling environment for the key drivers of human capital formation in the Caribbean —population dynamics, education, and employment— to shape the workforce, enhance labour productivity and create a path to sustainable development. However, this will not be achieved unless the subregion addresses the gender disparities in education and employment, the debilitating effect of non-communicable diseases, and the looming social protection burden of ageing from the demographic transition. Amidst these challenges, investment in information and telecommunication technologies offers the Caribbean a path to develop and earn dividends from its human capital. |
| Date: | 2026–03–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ecr:col033:85994 |
| By: | Grabowski, Michał; Costea, Iulia |
| Abstract: | This article examines the EU-law challenges arising from the use of artificial intelligence for payment initiation and execution ("Payment Agents") under European Union law. It focuses on Payment Agents that support purchasing workflows and are capable of initiating payments in both human-in-the-loop and human-out-of-the-loop environments. The article conceptualises Payment Agents as agentic systems and develops three regulatory models: (i) a protocol-only model, (ii) a model based on the involvement of a licensed payment service provider under PSD2, and (iii) a contract-based model with separated roles for a Payment Agent Provider and a Credentials Provider. It concludes that Payment Agents will, as a rule, qualify as "AI systems" within the meaning of the AI Act, whereas payment protocols should be understood as transactional infrastructure rather than general-purpose AI models. Typical agentic payment use cases are not currently listed as high-risk AI systems under Annex III of the AI Act. Under PSD2, the protocol-only model may amount to payment initiation services when it initiates transactions from a payment account, which implies licensing and strong customer authentication. This configuration resembles screen scraping. Agentic payments are not equivalent to merchant initiated transactions (MIT), where the payee initiates the transaction within scheme processing. In the contract-based model, the Credentials Provider can often be aligned with a pass-through wallet and a technical services provider. Depending on design, the arrangement may resemble a payment scheme and may trigger outsourcing under the EBA outsourcing framework and, for ICT services, DORA. The article concludes that existing legal institutions address the risks only partially. It argues that mitigation would be stronger if agentic payments were expressly recognised as a high-risk use case under the AI Act. |
| Keywords: | AI Act, agentic payments, Agents Payment Protocol, e-wallet, Merchant Initiated Transactions, PSD3 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:imfswp:338107 |
| By: | Georgios Tsiachtsiras (White Research SRL); Sergio Petralia (Utrecht University); Ernest Miguelez (AQR-IREA, University of Barcelona); Rosina Moreno (AQR-IREA, University of Barcelona) |
| Abstract: | This article studies how anti-scientific sentiment can shape the direction of technological change, focusing on the tensions between the Catholic Church and the French Republic in late nineteenth-century France. We construct a novel geo-referenced database of French patents filed at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (1838-1960) and combine it with historical measures of religiosity at the departmental level. We find that areas with higher shares of refractory clergy, those who refused to swear allegiance to the revolutionary state, produced significantly fewer electrical patents between 1890 and 1914. Crucially, this negative relationship does not extend to other technological fields or to overall patenting activity. Neither education nor migration explains this pattern. We also show that early electrical patenting predicts later activity in computer and communication technologies, consistent with path-dependent technological development. These findings suggest that conservative institutional environments did not suppress innovation broadly, but selectively discouraged disruptive technologies that challenged established norms, with consequences that persisted for decades. |
| Keywords: | innovation, patent data, religion, path-dependence, technological change JEL classification: L92, N73, O31, O33, P25 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aqr:wpaper:202602 |