journal articles

We study implications of automating routine cognitive work in shared service centres (SSCs) in Poland. Drawing on 31 in-depth interviews, we highlight the negotiated nature of automation processes shaped by interactions between headquarters, SSCs, and their workers. Workers actively participated in automation processes, eliminating the most mundane tasks. This resulted in upskilling, higher job satisfaction and empowerment. Yet, this depends upon the fact that automation is triggered by labour shortages that limit the labour-intensive expansion of SSCs.

We study the relationship between global value chain (GVC) participation, worker-level routine task intensity, and wage inequality within countries. Using survey data from 34 countries and instrumenting for GVC participation, we find that higher GVC participation is associated with more routine-intensive work, especially among workers in offshorable occupations. This indirectly widens within-country wage inequality. However, GVC participation directly contributes to reduced wage inequality, except in the richest countries. Overall, GVC participation is negatively associated with wage inequality in most low- and middle-income countries that receive offshored jobs, and positively in high-income countries that offshore jobs.

We study the age- and gender-specific labour market effects of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and robots in 14 European countries between 2010-2018. Using IV regressions we show that they increased the shares of young and prime-aged women in employment and in the wage bills of particular sectors, but reduced the shares of older women and prime-aged men.

Energy poverty, i.e., inefficient heating and insufficient access to energy services, can turn a shelter into a health hazard. We find that substandard housing and ineffective heating is associated with a higher risk of poor health in an urban context. We surveyed people living in two middle-sized cities in a coal-dependent region of Poland and used objective and subjective indicators of energy poverty and self-assessed health status. We demonstrate that people who live in substandard housing are more likely to exhibit poor musculoskeletal and cardiovascular outcomes, by 10 and 6 pp, respectively than otherwise similar people living in suitable housing conditions. We show that energy-poor people who use coal or a wood stove have a 24 pp higher likelihood of respiratory disease than the energy-poor who live in flats connected to district heating. We also find that a significant amount of the explained variance in the probability of respiratory disease is attributable to energy poverty. To improve the housing conditions and reduce the risk of poor health outcomes, we recommend two policy instruments: 1) a full subsidy for thermal retrofits and connecting multi-family buildings to the district heating network and 2) a targeted energy voucher for clean heating.