CEP | People | Georg Graetz

Biography

Dr Georg Graetz is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at Uppsala University. He is also affiliated with the Uppsala Center for Labor Studies, CESifo, and IZA. He obtained a PhD in Economics in 2014 and a BSc in Econometrics and Mathematical Economics in 2009, both from the London School of Economics.

Current areas of research include:

Labour market inequality: The impact of technological change; Career costs of occupational decline; The effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the adoption of new technologies.
Economics of Education: Reconciling evidence of employer learning with human capital and signalling theories of education.

Publications

Blog

What happens to people when machines replace them in the workplace?

New technologies are replacing workers in a growing range of occupations, causing loss of earnings and employment. However, these losses are smaller than those suffered by workers who experience mass layoffs. Per-Anders ... Read more...

Per-Anders Edin, Tiernan Evans, Georg Graetz, Sofia Hernnäs and Guy Michaels

12 October 2023

Journal article

Individual consequences of occupational decline

We assess the career earnings losses that individual Swedish workers suffered when their occupations' employment declined. High-quality data allow us to overcome sorting into declining occupations on various attributes, ... Read more...

Per-Anders Edin, Tiernan Evans, Georg Graetz, Sofia Hernnäs and Guy Michaels

01 August 2023

Blog

More education signals ability to employers, but does it really improve skills?

Better educated workers may earn higher wages for two possible reasons: because they acquire more skills or because more education signals their intellect and enthusiasm. Economists believe that signalling plays a role a... Read more...

Georg Graetz

31 July 2023

Journal article

Parental Education and the Responses to Higher SAT Scores

Using discontinuities within the Swedish SAT system, we study the causal impact of additional admission opportunities on participation in higher education among high-ability students. Students with low-educated parents w... Read more...

Georg Graetz, Oskar Nordström Skans and Björn Öckert

06 June 2023

CEP discussion papers

Imperfect signals

A pre-condition for employer learning is that signals at labor market entry do not fully reveal graduates' productivity. I model various distinct sources of signal imperfection - such as noise and multi-dimensional types... Read more...

Georg Graetz

03 May 2023

Journal article - forthcoming

Gender gap variation across assessment types: explanations and implications

Using Swedish population data, we document that girls outperform boys by a third of a standard deviation in school grades, whereas a gap of similar magnitude but opposite sign persists in SAT scores in the sample of non-... Read more...

Georg Graetz and Arizo Karimi

07 October 2022

Journal article - forthcoming

Technology and the labor market

This article introduces the Special Issue on "Technology and the Labor Market". We summarize the included articles and offer some lessons for policy and future research. The articles cover central issues such as how tech... Read more...

Georg Graetz, Oskar Nordström Skans and Pascual Restrepo

05 May 2022

Journal article

On the interpretation of diploma wage effects estimated by regression discontinuity designs

Several recent papers employ regression discontinuity (RD) designs to estimate the causal effect of a diploma or similar credentials on wages. I build a model of knowledge acquisition, test-taking and labour market caree... Read more...

Georg Graetz

01 February 2021

Journal article

Training requirements, automation, and job polarisation

We analyse how job training requirements interact with engineering complexity in shaping firms' automation decisions. A model that distinguishes between a task's engineering complexity and its training requirements predi... Read more...

Andy Feng and Georg Graetz

01 October 2020

CEP discussion papers

Family background and the responses to higher SAT scores

Using discontinuities within the Swedish SAT system, we show that additional admission opportunities causally affect college choices. Students with high-educated parents change timing, colleges, and fields in ways that a... Read more...

Georg Graetz, Oskar Nordström Skans and Björn Öckert

09 June 2020

CEP discussion papers

Labor demand in the past, present and future

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, technological change has led to the automation of existing tasks and the creation of new ones, as well as the reallocation of labor across occupations and industries. The... Read more...

Georg Graetz

26 March 2020

CentrePiece - The magazine of the Centre for Economic Performance

When machines replace people: individual consequences of occupational decline

What happens to people's careers when demand for their occupations declines, often as a result of technological change? Guy Michaels and colleagues' analysis of detailed occupational data on Swedish workers over several ... Read more...

Per-Anders Edin, Tiernan Evans, Georg Graetz, Sofia Hernnäs and Guy Michaels

01 November 2019

CEP discussion papers

Individual consequences of occupational decline

What are the earnings and employment losses that workers suffer when demand for their occupations declines? To answer this question we combine forecasts on occupational employment changes, which allow us to identify unan... Read more...

Per-Anders Edin, Tiernan Evans, Georg Graetz, Sofia Hernnäs and Guy Michaels

18 June 2019

Journal article

Robots at work

We analyze for the first time the economic contributions of modern industrial robots, which are flexible, versatile, and autonomous machines. We use novel panel data on robot adoption within industries in seventeen count... Read more...

Georg Graetz and Guy Michaels

01 December 2018

Journal article

A question of degree: The effects of degree class on labor market outcomes

How does performance at university affect labor market outcomes? Employing a regression discontinuity design, we show that university degree class causally affects graduatesâ€™ industry, wages, and earnings. Our sample c... Read more...

Andy Feng and Georg Graetz

01 December 2017

Journal article

Is modern technology responsible for jobless recoveries?

Since the early 1990s, recoveries from recessions in the US have been plagued by weak employment growth. We investigate whether a similar problem afflicts other developed economies, and whether technology is a culprit. W... Read more...

Georg Graetz and Guy Michaels

01 May 2017

CentrePiece - The magazine of the Centre for Economic Performance

In brief... Is technology to blame for jobless recoveries?

Since the early 1990s, the United States has been plagued by weak employment growth when emerging from recessions – so-called ‘jobless recoveries’. Georg Graetz and Guy Michaels look at multiple recoveries elsewhere in t... Read more...

Georg Graetz and Guy Michaels

01 March 2017

CEP discussion papers

Is modern technology responsible for jobless recoveries?

Since the early 1990s, recoveries from recessions in the US have been plagued by weak employment growth. One possible explanation for these “jobless” recoveries is rooted in technological change: middle-skill jobs, often... Read more...

Georg Graetz and Guy Michaels

13 January 2017

CentrePiece - The magazine of the Centre for Economic Performance

Robots at work: the impact on productivity and jobs

Robots may seem dangerous not only to cinema action heroes but also to the average manufacturing worker.To assess whether such concerns are well founded, Guy Michaels and Georg Graetz analyse the labour market effects of... Read more...

Georg Graetz and Guy Michaels

30 July 2015

CEP discussion papers

Robots at work

Despite ubiquitous discussions of robots’ potential impact, there is almost no systematic empirical evidence on their economic effects. In this paper we analyze for the first time the economic impact of industrial robots... Read more...

Georg Graetz and Guy Michaels

03 March 2015

CEP discussion papers

Rise of the machines: the effects of labor-saving innovations on jobs and wages

How do firms respond to technological advances that facilitate the automation of tasks? Which tasks will they automate, and what types of worker will be replaced as a result? We present a model that distinguishes between... Read more...

Andy Feng and Georg Graetz

11 February 2015

CentrePiece - The magazine of the Centre for Economic Performance

In brief... University exam results matter

As thousands of undergraduates across the UK take their exams, a study by Andy Feng and Georg Graetz reveals the importance of the results for subsequent earnings - specifically the value of a First compared with an Uppe... Read more...

Andy Feng and Georg Graetz

27 June 2013

CEP discussion papers

A question of degree: The effects of degree class on labor market outcomes

How does measured performance at university affect labor market outcomes? We show that degree class - a coarse measure of student performance used in the UK - causally affects graduates' industry and hence expected wages... Read more...

Andy Feng and Georg Graetz

29 May 2013