Stop tech? Policy preferences in response to technological change
PS9-2
Presented by: Aina Gallego
Recent research finds that workers whose jobs are at risk due to technological disruption are more likely to support radical right parties and may be more likely to support compensation that workers who are not at risk. In this paper, we ask to what extent do workers support a greater range of policies related to technological and what explains their support. We focus on a suit of policies that more directly affect the workplace, such as whether trade unions are involved in company decisions about the adoption of technology, government regulation of workplace technology, including platform-related regulation, and taxation to technological firms. We consider support for these policies as well as for traditional compensation. We present hypotehses about the relationship between automation risk and different classes of policy preferences with distinct redistributive consequences. Using original survey data from a panel study conducted in Spain in 2018 and 2021 that captures multiple measures of automation risk, we find that workers who are at higher risk prefer policies to prevent or slow down automation technology at the firm level, but we do not find higher support for more traditional redistribution or compensation.