Working Papers

Aging Population and Technology Adoption  - Revise and Resubmit (Review of Economic Studies)

Population aging affects labor supply, interest rates, and the skill composition of workers, altering technology adoption incentives. A dynamic general equilibrium task-based model of endogenous technology and skill acquisition shows that the impact of aging on technology depends on the underlying age structure of the population. When the population is young, aging boosts the adoption of labor-saving and skill-intensive new technology. Conversely, when the population is old, aging reduces new technology adoption, describing a hump-shaped relationship between age and new technology. The model, calibrated to European data, shows that aging significantly drove new technology adoption from 1990 to 2015, but caused a slowdown thereafter. Aging also influences the skill premium by affecting the demand and supply of skilled labor, thereby increasing inequality. Additionally, the aging-induced rise in retirement age slows new technology adoption and labor productivity growth. Policies that mitigate retirement age increases can lead to Pareto improvements.

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Fiscal policy and human capital in the race against the machine (with Niemann S. and Röser F.)
The interaction of fiscal policy and education spending on economic growth and inequality is analyzed in a dynamic growth model with automation, education choice, and human capital formation. Although beneficial for economic growth, automation contributes to wage inequality. While direct redistribution mitigates inequality at the cost of lower economic growth, education spending boosts production, eventually increasing inequality. The tax composition (labor vs robot tax) financing government spending is key in determining the effect on economic growth and inequality, as the robot tax is relatively more redistributive than the labor tax. We calibrate our model to the US economy and estimate the dynamic welfare-maximizing tax policy. Optimality requires an initial reduction in the robot tax to foster automation and boost economic growth, followed by its gradual increase as redistributive motives become more salient. Additionally, we explore education subsidies and identify the conditions leading to welfare improvements.

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Aging Consumers, Market Structure, and GDP Growth (with Max Brès)
As people age, preferences become more inelastic, and the opportunity cost of time drops after retirement. Demographic shifts, therefore, alter the aggregate demand and affect the market structure and growth. Using unpredicted foreign demographic changes, we isolate demand-side effects and observe that middle-aged consumers reduce competition, leading to declining production growth while young and old consumers have the opposite effect, i.e., aging consumers has a non-monotonic effect on competition and production growth. Our three-agent multi-sector general equilibrium search model shows that while young consumers enhance between-varieties competition and old consumers enhance within-varieties competition, middle-aged consumers reduce competition and shift demand to less productive firms, lowering growth. Our estimates show that changes in the age composition of consumers led to an 8.7\% reduction in the United States GDP growth from 1995-2004 and a 10.3\% increase from 2005-2019 due to baby boomers aging.
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Work in Progress

• Retirement Age Policy and Skill Acquisition over the Life Cycle - with Tim Hermann

• Technological Subsidies and the Gender Wage Gap - with Tommaso Santini

 Teaching

University of Vienna

• Course: Applied Macroeconomics UE (2024) 

University of Konstanz

• Course: Technological Change, Automation, and Artificial Intelligence (2022,2023) 

• Course: Introduction to Matlab for Macroeconomics (2021, 2022, 2023)

• Master Seminar: Hot Topics in Macro Labor (2022, 2023)

• Reading Group:  Hot Topics in Economics (2022)

• Bachelor Seminar: The Economics of Technological Change (2023)   

University of Rome Tor Vergata

• Teaching Assistant (Prof. Daniela Vuri): Microeconomics (2021)

New York University (Florence)

• Teaching Assistant (Prof. Giampiero Gallo): International Economics (2018, 2019)

 Awards

 Teaching Award of the Department of Economics for Young Scientists
 University of  Konstanz,  2023