The workshop “Old and new inequalities in disruptive times” was organised by UNTANGLED researchers Roberta Capello, Camilla Lenzi, and Elisa Panzera from Politecnico di Milano, with the aim of bringing together the newest research from projects: PILLARS, ESSPIN, TWIN SEEDS, and UNTANGLED.
The event, which featured presentations of seven papers, started with a keynote from Professor George Petrakos (University of Thessaly), coordinator of the ESSPIN project, who talked about drivers and implications of inequalities in Europe. He stressed that regional inequalities are rising in Europe, and interest from researchers and policymakers is increasing.
The first part of the workshop concentrated on the impact on inequalities of the radical technological transformations known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Camilla Lenzi presented the findings of a paper she wrote jointly with Roberta Capello and Elisa Panzera within Project UNTANGLED. The authors confirmed that wage inequalities have been rising in Europe, as an outcome of technological transformations. In regions where the digital service economy is fully developed, intraregional income inequalities are higher. Next, Robert Stehrer (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies) presented his paper “On the impact of ICT accumulation on labour demand growth and labour income shares”, which shows that ICT capital accumulation has no strong impact on labour demand growth. Robert’s presentation was followed by another UNTANGLED researcher, Francesco Venturini (University of Perugia), who presented the preliminary result of his study “Firm-Level productivity effects of patents in the Fourth Industrial Revolution Technologies across European countries” written jointly with Fabrizio Pompei. The first part of the workshop was closed by a presentation by Maria Savona (University of Sussex, SPRU and LUISS), “Emerging digital technologies and labour markets. A systemic review of technical literature” based on her research with Tommaso Ciarli, Ed Steinmueller, and Simone Vannuccini as part of the PILLARS project.
The next three presentations, discussed during the second part of the workshop, concentrated on the impact of globalisation and migration on inequalities. First, TWIN SEEDS researcher Laura Resmini (University of Milano Bicocca) talked about the territorial impact of global value chains. Next, ESSPIN Project researcher Riccardo Crescenzi (London School of Economics), in a presentation titled “Harnessing Global Value Chains for Regional Development”, discussed how regions can build, embed, and reshape global value chains for their local enhancement. The session ended with a presentation by UNTANGLED researcher Michał Burzyński (Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research, LISER) who discussed his paper “Natives Sorting and the Impact of Immigration on European Labor Markets” written jointly with Giovanni Peri.
The program is available here.
