Working Paper: NBER ID: w25103
Authors: Arnaud Costinot; Ivn Werning
Abstract: Technological change, from the advent of robots to expanded trade opportunities, tends to create winners and losers. How should government policy respond? And how should the overall welfare impact of technological change on society be valued? We provide a general theory of optimal technology regulation in a second best world, with rich heterogeneity across households, linear taxes on the subset of firms affected by technological change, and a nonlinear tax on labor income. Our first results consist of three optimal tax formulas, with minimal structural assumptions, involving sufficient statistics that can be implemented using evidence on the distributional impact of new technologies, such as robots and trade. Our second result is a comparative static exercise illustrating that while distributional concerns create a rationale for non-zero taxes on robots and trade, the magnitude of these taxes may decrease as the process of automation and globalization deepens and inequality increases. Our final result shows that, despite limited tax instruments, technological progress is always welcome and valued in the same way as in a first best world.
Keywords: robots; trade; technology regulation; optimal taxation; welfare impact
JEL Codes: F11; F13; H0; H2; H21
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Technological change (O33) | Winners and losers (D44) |
| Optimal taxation of new technology firms (H32) | Distributional impacts of technologies (D39) |
| Technological progress (O49) | Welfare impact (D69) |
| Technological progress (O49) | Marginal rates of substitution and transformation (F16) |
| Robots and trade (F19) | Wage distribution (J31) |
| Robots and trade (F19) | Overall welfare (I31) |