Technologies, labour markets and workers: three essays on the consequences of technological change on labour

This thesis examines the consequences of technological change for employment, wages and the organization of work across labour markets and occupational groups. It combines a comparative cross-national perspective with case-study evidence from Germany in order to capture the labour market dynamics related to technological change at both the macro and micro levels. Substantively, the thesis addresses three interconnected research questions. First, it investigates how advanced digital technologies affect European occupational structures and to what extent institutional and structural characteristics moderate their impact. Second, it analyses how the adoption of innovation at the firm level affects within-firm inequalities in employment and wages in Germany, with particular attention to whether and how works councils attenuate their distributive effects. Third, it examines the relationship between Artificial Intelligence and work organisation, focusing on how AI is associated with different patterns of autonomy and control and whether these patterns vary across skill groups and task profiles in German workplaces. Empirically, the thesis integrates large-scale survey evidence covering multiple European countries with linked employer-employee administrative and survey data from Germany. This design enables the study to connect changes in occupational structures to institutional variation across national labour markets, while also identifying the organizational processes through which technological adoption translates into heterogeneous employment, wage and work-organization outcomes within firms and workplaces. Overall, the findings indicate that macro- and micro-level dynamics do not necessarily move in parallel: changes observable at the level of occupational structure may coexist with distinct, and sometimes divergent, processes of inequality production within firms. Across the three empirical chapters, the results underscore that the effects of technological change on socio-economic outcomes are neither uniform nor purely technologically determined. Rather, they are mediated by institutional and structural features - such as skill formation systems or workforce representation - which can catalyse and redirect the impact of technologies. By accounting for these structural and institutional moderating mechanisms, the thesis highlights a dimension that is often under-specified in canonical approaches linking technological change to labour-market outcomes and it provides a finer graded account of how digitalization relates to employment relations and stratification processes.

Grantor dc:publisher

Università degli studi di Trento

Year dc:date

2026

Author dc:creator

• Bernabei, Lorenzo

Contributors dc:contributor

• Barbieri, Paolo

Statement dc:rights

• info:eu-repo/semantics/closedAccess
• license:Tutti i diritti riservati (All rights reserved)
• license uri:iris.PRI01

Language dc:language

eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/11572/493092

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:iris.unitn.it:11572/493092