Technology is increasingly central to our lives in all manner of ways and is continuously opening up new possibilities. But who will most benefit from them? Some claim that tech companies and the products they develop are empowering ordinary people to take more control over their economic and social lives, enhancing their personal wellbeing and smashing up the old monopolies and economic power bases of the 20th century. But is this really the case? Without proper governance, the increasing role of technology in our lives and in our economy could change relations between people and institutions in a way that strengthens existing inequalities of power, rather than dissipating them. This paper explores the channels through which this could occur, the consequences of those changes, and some of the public policy questions that result.

Technology is increasingly central to our lives in all manner of ways and is continuously opening up new possibilities. But who will most benefit from them? Some claim that tech companies and the products they develop are empowering ordinary people to take more control over their economic and social lives, enhancing their personal wellbeing and smashing up the old monopolies and economic power bases of the 20th century. But is this really the case? Without proper governance, the increasing role of technology in our lives and in our economy could change relations between people and institutions in a way that strengthens existing inequalities of power, rather than dissipating them. This paper explores the channels through which this could occur, the consequences of those changes, and some of the public policy questions that result. This paper covers three broad and interrelated topics: 1. Automation & Industrial Transition: Changes to production processes resulting from new technology; 2. Consequences for the welfare state and fiscal policy: The effects of technological change on the need for and effectiveness of social security and redistribution; and 3. Big Data & Digitalisation: Changes to how information is captured, stored and shared that affects how people (as consumers, workers, employers, etc.) relate to one another.

This report has been prepared to inform the Collective Measures Study (CMS) being undertaken by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UK Commission). The Policy Research Institute and IPSOS MORI were commissioned as part of a wider research consortium to undertake a policy prioritisation exercise to ‘test out’ policy options and inform UK Commission decision making in terms of employer investment in skills. The CMS reflects an evidence informed approach to policy development, based on a five-stage approach to identify a strong conceptual and theoretical base, marshal the empirical evidence and identify the policy levers that have been adopted to encourage employer investment in skills in the UK and beyond. This report presents the findings of a deliberative research exercise and informs the identification of policy options to be considered for economic appraisal.

The University of Guelph was one of the first institutions to define the skills students would learn in their programs. This evolved into a list of five institutional learning outcomes that were approved in 2012. As a next step, researchers worked in collaboration with Desire2Learn (D2L), a provider of learning management systems, to align and refine course- and program-level outcomes and develop a process to assess them. A new study published by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario, Integrating Pedagogy and Technology to Measure Program and Institutional Learning Outcomes at the University of Guelph, finds that the online learning-outcomes assessment tool was able to effectively capture and assess learning outcomes at the program and institutional level.

This study is shaped by the recognition that while there has been a great deal of policy development around the transition from unemployment and inactivity to employment over the last decade, policy can still be informed about how best to nurture sustainable employment for those at risk of labour market exclusion. There remain challenges associated with, for example, the cost-effectiveness of intervention, the „low pay no pay‟ cycle and access to training. As a consequence, the opportunities for sustainable progression, upward social mobility and alleviating poverty remain unrealised for many workers in lower paid occupations. The methodology underpinning this study is predominantly based on a literature search and review of the research and evidence base post 2005. This is supplemented with the development of four international case studies (Australia, Denmark, Germany, United States contained in a separate annex) and an e-consultation with country experts.

The digital transformation of companies is underway. It impacts all of their activities, their way of producing up their relationships with subcontractors and the customer experience. The organization of work is changing, too, as a result of these new technologies. We often hear the digital actors speak about the best ways to carry out these changes. What about "traditional" companies? How Leaders at the controls they consider this transformation?  This book gives voice to business leaders to understand their perception of digitization and how they implement it. It brings together a series of interviews conducted by Christophe Deshayes from business owners of all sizes, from various fields of activity, and public and cooperative organizations.  The collection of Docs La Fabrique brings together texts that have not been developed at the request or under the control of its board of direction, but provide incentives for thought to the debate on industry issues. We hope that it will find interested readers among industrialists and policy makers and will be happy to give feedback. [googletranslate_en]

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) jobs are a key contributor to economic growth and national competitiveness. Yet STEM workers are perceived to be in short supply. This paper shows that the “STEM shortage” phenomenon is explained by technological change, which introduces new job tasks and makes old ones obsolete. We find that the initially high economic return to applied STEM degrees declines by more than 50 percent in the first decade of working life. This coincides with a rapid exit of college graduates from STEM occupations. Using detailed job vacancy data, we show that STEM jobs changed especially quickly over the last decade, leading to flatter age-earnings profiles as the skills of older cohorts became obsolete. Our findings highlight the importance of technology-specific skills in explaining lifecycle returns to education, and show that STEM jobs are the leading edge of technology diffusion in the labor market.

Regardless of its success rate, prediction can open our eyes to new possibilities and prevent us from being complacent about what lies ahead. Using alternative scenarios allows policy makers and managers to draw pictures of the future which might plausibly unfold, and in doing so, develop strategies to “win” in these futures.

The labor market increasingly rewards social skills. Between 1980 and 2012, jobs requiring high levels of social interaction grew by nearly 12 percentage points as a share of the U.S. labor force. Math-intensive but less social jobs - including many STEM occupations - shrank by 3.3 percentage points over the same period. Employment and wage growth was particularly strong for jobs requiring high levels of both math skill and social skill. To understand these patterns, I develop a model of team production where workers “trade tasks” to exploit their comparative advantage. In the model, social skills reduce coordination costs, allowing workers to specialize and work together more efficiently. The model generates predictions about sorting and the relative returns to skill across occupations, which I investigate using data from the NLSY79 and the NLSY97. Using a comparable set of skill measures and covariates across survey waves, I find that the labor market return to social skills was much greater in the 2000s than in the mid 1980s and 1990s.