We investigate agent supervision, a form of customization, which constrains the actions of an agent so as to enforce certain desired behavioral specifications. This is done in a setting based on the Situation Calculus and a variant of the ConGolog programming language which allows for nondeterminism, but requires the remainder of a program after the execution of an action to be determined by th...

Using a large, individual-level wage data set, we examine the impact of a major technological innovation—the steam engine—on the demand for skills in the merchant shipping industry. We find that the technical change created a new demand for engineers, a skilled occupation. It had a deskilling effect on production work— moderately skilled able-bodied seamen were replaced by unskilled engine room...