Workshop on Skills, Tasks and Technologies in the AI Era
This workshop was held in conjunction with the 2025 Munich Lectures in Economics and gathered leading international researchers to present cutting-edge work on “Skills, Tasks and Technologies in the AI Era”. It covered recent advances of the task approach to labor market analysis, topics of AI and technological change, and questions of skill upgrading and the future of work more broadly.
Presentations dealt with topics such as the impact of AI on the evolution of labor demand, labor market adaptation to technological change, the role of new technologies and of new skills, and the role of work task dynamics in long-run inequality.
The workshop was held in honor of the 2025 Distinguished CES Fellow, Prof. David Autor.
Program
08:45 – 09:00 Welcome and introduction (David Autor and Ludger Woessmann)
Session 1 – AI and Labor Demand
Chair: Ludger Woessmann
9:00 – 9:45
Evolving Skill Demands in the Age of AI: Evidence from Europe
Najada Feimi, Christina Gathmann (LISER Luxembourg), Terry Gregory and David Marguerit
Discussant: Alan Manning
9:45 - 10:30
Social Spillovers and AI Adoption: Evidence from Denmark
Xavier Jaravel (LSE), Philippe Aghion, Simon Bunel, Thomas Mikaelsen, Alexandra Roulet, Jakob Sogaard
Discussant: Juanna Joensen
10:30 – 11:00 Coffee Break
Session 2: Task Dynamics and Long-run Inequality
Chair: David Autor
11:00 – 11:45
The Decline of Routine Tasks, Education Investments, and Intergenerational Mobility
Patrick Bennett, Kai Liu and Kjell Salvanes (Norwegian School of Economics)
Discussant: Jonas Loebbing
11:45 – 12:30
Task Dynamics and Wage Inequality in Germany: A Decomposition Analysis from 1979 to 2018
Bernd Fitzenberger (IAB Nuremberg), Martin Friedrich, Florian Hack, and Alexandra Spitz-Oener
Discussant: Anna Salomons
12:30 – 13:30 Lunch
Session 3: New Skills
Chair: Alan Manning
13:30 – 14:15
Measuring Human Leadership Skills with Artificially Intelligent Agents
Ben Weidmann (Harvard University), Yixian Xu and David J. Deming
Discussant: Simon Wiederhold
14:15 – 15:00
Expertise at Work: New Technologies, New Skills, and Worker Impacts
Cäcilia vom Baur (ifo Munich); Anna Salomons and Ulrich Zierahn-Weilage
Discussant: Peter Fredriksson
Session 4: Poster Session
15:00 – 15:10
Poster Flash Talks
15:10 – 16:00
Complementarities in High School and College Investments
John Eric Humphries, Juanna S. Joensen (University of Chicago) and Gregory F. Veramendi
How Well Do Surveys Measure Training?
Jeffrey A. Smith (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
The Value of Early-Career Skills
Christina Langer and Simon Wiederhold (MLU Halle-Wittenberg and IWH)
Automatability of Occupations, Workers’ Labor-Market Expectations, and Willingness to Train
Philipp Lergetporer, Katharina Wedel (ifo Munich) and Katharina Werner
Automation and Inequality: Implications for Redistribution Policy
Hayato Kato and Jonas Loebbing (LMU Munich)
Returns to Cognitive and Social Skills over the Life Cycle and across Cohorts
Peter Fredriksson, Georg Graetz, Martin Nybom (IFAU Uppsala) and Björn Öckert
The New Frontier of Automation: AI Diffusion and Job Transformation in German Workplaces
Melanie Arntz, Myriam Baum, Eduard Brüll, Ralf Dorau, Matthias Hartwig, Britta Matthes, Sophie-Charlotte Meyer, Oliver Schlenker (ifo & IAB), Anita Tisch, Sascha Wischniewski
Multidimensional Skills on LinkedIn Profiles: Measuring Human Capital and the Gender Skill Gap
David Dorn, Florian Schoner (ifo Munich), Moritz Seebacher, Lisa Simon and Ludger Woessmann
16:00 – 16:15 Coffee Break
Session 5: Skills and Jobs Chair
Chair: Peter Fredriksson
16:15 – 17:00
Supporting Job Search and Job Finding through Cognitive Training
Hélène Benghalem, Mirjam Bächli, Doriana Tinello, Sascha Zuber, Mauro Cherubini, Damaris Aschwanden, Matthias Kliegel, Rafael Lalive (University of Lausanne) and Michele Pellizzari
Discussant: Jeffrey A. Smith
17:00 – 17:45
Left Behind: Job Suburbanization and Racial Inequality in Mid-20th Century America
Juliette Fournier (LMU Munich)
Discussant: Oliver Schlenker
18:00 Buffet Dinner at the ifo Instiute
Session 6: Labor Market Adaptation to Technological Change
Chair: Anna Salomons
09:00 – 09:45
AI and the Transformation of Firm Work
Luisa Braunschweig, Johannes Dahlke, Duncan Roth, Maria Sirvent, Alexandra Spitz-Oener (HU Berlin)
Discussant: Ingrid Hägele
09:45 – 10:30
Psychological Traits and Adaptation in the Labor Market
Ramin Izadi and Joonas Tuhkuri (Stockholm University)
Discussant: Markus Nagler
10:30 – 11:00 Coffee Break
Session 7: New Technologies: Evidence from Automation
Chair: Jeffrey A. Smith
11:00 – 11:45
Organized Labor Versus Robots? Evidence from Micro Data
Sebastian Findeisen, Wolfgang Dauth (IAB Nuremberg) and Oliver Schlenker
Discussant: Martin Nybom
11:45 – 12:30
Augmentation or Automation: the Changing Labor Market Impact of Machines
Federica Coelli, David Dorn (University of Zurich), David Hemous and Morten Olsen
Discussant: Joonas Tuhkuri
12:30 – 13:30 Lunch and farewell
End of Workshop
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