Fan Siyuan, an undergraduate from the School of Economics, Renmin University of China (RUC) published an article entitled “Losing trust when pursuing development: How automation hindered political trust in China?” on Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization.

Another two authors are Lu Wenyi and Zhuang Shilong, Ph.D. students from the School of  Economics, Peking University.

Fan Siyuan is a senior student from the School of Economics, RUC. Fan’s research interests mainly include microeconomic theory and development economics. His research results have been published on Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization.

Abstract

The side effects of automation on the economy have been discussed frequently, but little is known regarding its political consequences. This paper examines the causal effect that automation induces on political costs for the local government. By combining the national individual-level panel data of political trust with the prefecture-level robot exposure rate in China, we find that the development of automation would reduce individuals’ political trust in the local government. Furthermore, we explore the channels through which the automation process could affect political trust, namely the risk of unemployment, intensified pessimism about local government, higher downside risk, and declining organization participation. This paper provides empirical evidence for the impact of automation and the source of political legitimacy, emphasizing the crucial role of governments in coping with technological progress and making good use of endogenous creative destruction.

For more details, please refer to https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2023.12.025.