Nunes A, Huh L, Kagan N, Freeman RB.
“Estimating the Energy Impact of Electric, Autonomous Taxis: Evidence from a Select Market,” Environmental Research Letters (in press 2021). Open Access article. Environmental Research Letters. 2021.
Publisher's VersionAbstractElectric, autonomous vehicles promise to address technical consumption inefficiencies associated with gasoline use and reduce emissions. Potential realization of this prospect has prompted considerable interest and investment in the technology. Using publicly available data from a select market, we examine the magnitude of the envisioned benefits and the determinants of the financial payoff of investing in a tripartite innovation in motor vehicle transportation: vehicle electrification, vehicle automation, and vehicle sharing. In contrast to previous work, we document that 1) the technology’s envisioned cost effectiveness may be impeded by previously unconsidered parameters, 2) the inability to achieve cost parity with the status quo does not necessarily preclude net increases in energy consumption and emissions, 3) these increases are driven primarily by induced demand and mode switches away from pooled personal vehicles, and 4) the aforementioned externalities may be mitigated by leveraging a specific set of technological, behavioral and logistical pathways. We quantify – for the first time – the thresholds required for each of these pathways to be effective and demonstrate that pathway stringency is largely influenced by heterogeneity in trip timing behavior. We conclude that enacting these pathways is crucial to fostering environmental stewardship absent impediments in economic mobility.
Booth A, Freeman RB, Meng X, Zhang J.
"Trade Unions and the Welfare of Rural-Urban Migrant Workers in China," Industrial and Labor Relations Review, (April 21) 2021. Industrial and Labor Relations Review. 2021.
Publisher's VersionAbstract
Using a panel survey, the authors investigate how the welfare of rural-urban migrant workers in China is affected by trade union presence at the workplace. Controlling for individual fixed effects, they find the following. Relative to workers from workplaces without union presence or with inactive unions, both union-covered non-members and union members in workplaces with active unions earn higher monthly income, are more likely to have a written contract, be covered by social insurances, receive fringe benefits, express work-related grievances through official channels, feel more satisfied with their lives, and are less likely to have mental health problems.
Dosi G, Freeman RB, Pereira MC, Roventini A, Virgilllito ME.
Impact of Deunionization on Growth and Dispersion of Productivity and Pay. Industrial and Corporate Change. 2021;30 (2 (April) :377–408.
Publisher's VersionAbstractThis article presents an Agent-Based Model (ABM) that seeks to explain the concordance of sluggish growth of productivity and of real wages found in macroeconomic statistics, and the increased dispersion of firm productivity and worker earnings found in micro level statistics in advanced economies at the turn of the 21st century. It shows that a single market process unleashed by the decline of unionization can account for both the macro- and micro-economic phenomena, and that deunionization can be modeled as an endogenous outcome of competition between high wage firms seeking to raise productive capacity and low productivity firms seeking to cut wages. The model highlights the antipodal competitive dynamics between a “winner-takes-all economy” in which corporate strategies focused on cost reductions lead to divergence in productivity and wages and a “social market economy” in which competition rewards the accumulation of firm-level capabilities and worker skills with a more egalitarian wage structure.
Xie Q, Freeman RB.
"The Contribution of Chinese Diaspora Researchers to China's Catching Up in Global Science and High-Tech Industries,” (revised Feb 2021). 2021.
Publisher's VersionAbstract
This study examines the contribution of Chinese diaspora researchers – those born in China but working outside the country – to China's catching up in global science to become a world leader in research publications and citations. Using a novel name-based way to identify Chinese diaspora authors of scientific papers, we show that these researchers produce a large proportion of global scientific papers of high quality, gaining about twice as many citations as other papers of the same vintage. Our analysis also shows that diaspora researchers are a critical node in the co-authorship and citation networks that connect scientific discovery in China with the rest of the world. In co-authorship, diaspora researchers are over-represented on international collaborations with China-addressed authors. In citations, a paper with a diaspora author is more likely to cite China-addressed papers than a non-China addressed paper without a diaspora author; and, commensurately, China-addressed papers are more likely to cite a non-China addressed paper with a diaspora author than a non-China paper without a diaspora author. Through those pathways, diaspora research contributed to China’s 2000-2015 catch-up in science and to global science writ large, consistent with ethnic network models of knowledge transfer, and contrary to brain drain fears that the emigration of researchers harms the source country.
dash_24feb21_ms_contrib_of_china_diaspora_res_to_glob_sci_catchup_xie-rbf.pdf Freeman RB.
"Ownership Cures for Inequality", Chapter 21 in Olivier Blanchard and Dani Rodrik (editors). In: Combating Inequality: Rethinking Policies to Reduce Inequality in Advanced Economies. Cambridge : MIT Press ; 2021.
Publisher's VersionAbstract
What, if anything, can the United States do to reverse the upward trend in inequality and the danger that it will lead to populist despotism or a corrupt oligarchy with laws made for the few, not for the many?
I propose two sets of policies. The first requires reforms in labor laws and regulations to better enable workers to organize and bargain collectively with employers. The second requires tax and procurement policies to encourage firms to develop employment ownership programs so that workers own some of the capital that employs them and additional policies that increase worker investments in capital more broadly. By operating on ownership of both labor and capital, the policies can modernize American economic institutions to fit the coming world of artificial intelligence (AI) robotics and avoid Madison’s Scylla and Charybdis choice between anarchy and corruption.
ownership_cures_for_inequality_freeman_ms-for-dash_24mar2020.docx