Rainer Klump

Rainer Klump is professor of economic policy at Goethe University Frankfurt since 2000 where he has also taken over the position of the Executive Director of the Frankfurt House of Finance. He has studied economics at the universities of Mainz, Paris I (Panthéon-Sorboanne) and Erlangen-Nueremberg where he also did his doctorate and habilitation in economics. He held professorial positions at the universities of Wuerzburg and Ulm before coming to Frankfurt. Between 2015 and 2017 he was on leave to become rector of the University of Luxemburg. Research visits led him to the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, DC, to Université Paris-Dauhine PSL and Sciences Po, Paris and to Fudan University, Shanghai. His research has a focus on economic policy, economic growth and sustainable development as well as on history of economic thought. 

The project

Titre: Economic growth and structural change - the impact of robots and automation

The overall topic for my research that I would like to conduct during my sabbactical in Paris in collaboration with colleagues from Université Paris-Dauphine and other French experts is “Economic Growth and Structural Change - the Impact of Robots and Automation”. This builds on my ongoing quantitative research on robots and automation based on data from the International Federation of Robots (IFR); for more details see Jurkat et al. (2021; 2022). It is also linked to topics that were presented at the first meeting of robot researchers in the social sciences (CORA - Conference on Robots and Automation) that I had the pleasure to organize in October 2022 in Frankfurt; see the conference program at https://www.wiwi.unifrankfurt.
de/abteilungen/eq/professoren/klump/cora-2022-conference.html. I plan to conduct a study on the impact of robots and automation on productivity, employment and wages within the main sectors of the French economy. While the industrial sectors has already been studied intensively there is so far relatively little evidence on the sectoral transformation within the service sector and within agriculture, two sectors with considerable weight in the French economy. The study will therefore not only look at the dynamics of the use of industrial robots, but also look at the evidence for the use of service robots in various
applications.

Hosting institution: Université Paris-Dauphine PSL

Selective Bibliography

• (with A. Jurkat and F. Schneider), Tracking the rise of robots: The IFR Database, in: Journal of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 242 (2022), 669-689. 
• (with L. Pilz): The Formation of a 'Spirit of Capitalism' in Upper Germany: Leonhard Fronsperger’s 'On the Praise of Self-Interest', Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Vol. 43 (2021), 401-419. 
• (with A. Jurkat): Monetary Policy, Factor Substitution, and Convergence, in: Macroeconomic Dynamics, Vol. 22 (2018), 63-76.
• (with M. Wörsdörfer): Paternalistic economic policies: Foundations, implications and critical evaluations, in: Ordo Yearbook of Economic and Social Order, Vol. 66 (2015), 27-60.
• Wirtschaftspolitik. Instrumente, Ziele und Institutionen, 4. ed. München 2021 (3. ed. München 2013; 2. ed. München 2011; 1. ed. München 2006).