RCL: Industry 4.0: Addressing Challenges for Productivity, Employment and Inclusive growth

Project No. P-REP-20-9

Project title: Industry 4.0: Addressing Challenges for Productivity, Employment and Inclusive growth

Project research leader: Dr. Maik Huettinger

Project research team: Dr. Aras Zirgulis, Dr. Jonathan Boyd, Dr. Eglė Verseckaitė, doct. Marius Kušlys

Automation technology is dramatically changing labour markets and the nature of work. While it certainly increases productivity and can raise living standards, economists are increasingly becoming alerted to its potential harms. The OECD, in its report Job Creation and Local Economic Development (2018), found that within-country regions are particularly susceptible to the risks of automation, and there is an asymmetric risk of automation at the regional and local level.

Unfortunately, the OECD report was unable to extend its study to Lithuanian regions. The aim of this project is to assess the risk of automation across Lithuania’s regions and propose how to best deal with these risks.

The project has three objectives:

1. To determine the risk of automation across Lithuania’s regions, and to categorise each Lithuanian region according to the OECD’s regional typology for employment creation in the face of technological disruption.
2. To identify regions and industries which are the most critical to fostering Integracinis produktyvumo augimas using the relative risks of job automation across Lithuania’s regions.
3. To create an industry 4.0 public policy framework which incorporates the needs and positions of all relevant stakeholders, including a series of recommendations on how to improve the legal climate, worker competence training, and industry digitalization, while incorporating best practices and policy prescriptions from similar cases involving similar cases to that of Lithuania at the present time.

The project is intended to support the ‘Lithuanian Industry Digitisation Roadmap’; to support the OECD’s ongoing efforts to track local economic and skill development, and will augment both the above-mentioned 2018 report, and the report Better Use of Skills in the Workplace: Why It Matters for Productivity and Local Jobs (OECD, 2017a).

Project duration: 2020 03 02 – 2020 08 31

Project budget: 61 142 EUR

Funding: the project has received grant from Lithuanian Reasearch Council under the National Programme