Automation, automatic capital returns, and the functional income distribution

This paper studies the economic implications of automation. We consider that automation is affected by disruptive technologies which entail a structural change consisting in introduction new physical capital input (a combination artificial intelligence and autonomous robots), additional to ‘traditional’ assets labor. ‘automatic’ assumed carry out production activities without need be combined with propose simple function combining both traditional technologies, show consequences depend on automatic adoption rate elasticity substitution between technology. find that, if below threshold matches marginal productivity capital, little effects are derived from automation, independently substitution. However, above level higher enough, process can lead robocalypse scenario total shift estimate, through benchmark calibration model, for about 22.5%.