Case Studies¶
Explore how technology changes production, wages, and work. Choose a case below to download the student PDF.
The education wage premium
Why did university graduates’ relative wages rise even as graduates became more abundant? This case examines the race between the supply of educated workers and technological changes that increase demand for their skills, connecting evidence on the U.S. wage premium to computerization, task assignment, and wage inequality. The case is based on Acemoglu and Autor (2011), Skills, Tasks and Technologies: Implications for Employment and Earnings, Handbook of Labor Economics, vol. 4B; Autor, Levy, and Murnane (2003), The Skill Content of Recent Technological Change: An Empirical Exploration, Quarterly Journal of Economics 118(4), 1279–1333; and Hassan, Kalyani, and Restrepo (2026), The Skill Premium in Times of Rapid Technological Change, NBER Working Paper 34939 (March 1 version).
Download case PDFBetter computers and weak links
How can rapidly improving computers receive a falling share of income, and why might progress in one activity deliver limited gains for the economy as a whole? This case uses evidence on computerization and uneven productivity growth to explore how essential activities that remain hard to improve constrain production, and how substitution shapes wages, capital returns, and income shares. The case is based on Jones and Tonetti (2026), Past Automation and Future A.I.: How Weak Links Tame the Growth Explosion (March 29, version 0.4).
Download case PDFRobots, tools, and jobs
Do machines that take over workers’ tasks have the same employment effects as tools that help workers perform them? Drawing on machinery imports and labour-market evidence from Brazil, this case distinguishes automation from worker assistance and examines how task assignment, productivity, and expanding output affect employment across worker groups. It also asks how researchers separate these effects using changes in import tariffs. The case is based on de Souza and Li (2025), Robots, Tools, and Jobs: Evidence from Brazilian Labor Markets, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Working Paper 2023-42 (May 23 revision).
Download case PDFThe inner beauty of firms
How much can a salon gain by dividing work among specialists, and what limits a manager's ability to coordinate them? Using detailed service records from U.S. hair salons, this case examines how worker-task assignments reveal specialization and how specialization relates to revenue per service minute, customer value, and teamwork. A comparative-advantage example shows how better scheduling can widen a manager's span of control and make more specialized assignments profitable. The case is based on Kohlhepp (2025), The Inner Beauty of Firms (June 30 working-paper version).
Download case PDFHow substitutable are capital and labour?
How can we estimate whether machines substitute for workers or complement their skills? This case connects input quantities, prices, and income payments to the elasticity of substitution, then examines capital–skill complementarity in computerization and AI. Students consider what regression evidence can reveal, why unobserved productivity and simultaneous choices complicate estimation, and how technology can change wage inequality. The case is based on Krusell, Ohanian, Ríos-Rull, and Violante (2000), Capital-Skill Complementarity and Inequality: A Macroeconomic Analysis, Econometrica 68(5), 1029–1053; and Luduvice and Pinheiro (2026), AI-Augmented Capital-Skill Complementarity (August version).
Download case PDFThe changing work of making boots
When mechanization transforms an industry, do established workers retrain, lose their jobs, or remain while a new generation chooses different careers? This case follows English bootmaking through census evidence on incumbent workers, new occupations, and young entrants. It explores how substantial occupational change can coexist with stable industry employment, and how declining entry can reshape a trade without widespread displacement of its existing workers. The case is based on Vipond (2026), Technological Unemployment in Victorian Britain: Young Workers and the Collapse of Entry, Stone Center Working Paper 26-13 (August version).
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