The number of Green Energy patents rose sharply in the years leading up to 2013, but then fell back. What caused this slow down?
A greater reliance on robots is, for better or worse, changing our economies — yet research indicates a positive effect on trade and exports. How far is this linked to margins and unit price?
When migrants return to their home country, what do they need to thrive? Two new reports for the International Labour Organization spell out the background for Ethiopia and give specific recommendations.
These are just a few of the questions tackled by our researchers in December 2018 — in three journal articles, two reports, and two working papers, among many others. Click here for the full list of our most recent publications.
Journal articles
‘Measuring innovation in energy technologies: Green patents as captured by WIPO’s International Patent Classification (IPC) green inventory’ analyses inventions in green energy technologies over the period 2005-2017. The article finds that energy innovation-related patenting has first expanded exponentially up until 2013, both in terms of the total number of patent families and PCT international patent applications in green energy technologies. Yet this period of accelerated growth in the number of published green energy patents has been followed by a period of deceleration—even a slow decline. By Phd fellow Lorena Rivera Leon et al.
‘The Great Recession, financial strain and self-assessed health in Ireland’ studies the effects of the 2008 economic crisis on general health in one of the most severely affected EU economies—Ireland. The article examines the relationship between compositional changes in demographic and socio-economic factors, such as education, income, and financial strain, and changes in the prevalence of poor self-assessed health over a five-year period (2008–2013). Results show that the increased financial strain explained the largest part of the increase in poor health in the Irish population and different sub-groups. By PhD fellow Gintare Mazeikaite, Prof. Cathal O’Donoghue et al.
‘Multidimensional child poverty analyses and child-sensitive social protection‘ explores how recent insights stemming from multidimensional child poverty research led to specific arguments in favour of child-sensitive social protection and a further elaboration of its focus. The article argues that multidimensional child poverty analysis helps in refining the implementation of child-sensitive social protection as described above. The instruments that could be useful in this context have to be tailor-made to address children’s risks and needs, as illustrated by their dimensional deprivations. By Dr. Victor Cebotari et al.
Reports
The ‘ILO Ethiopia reintegration background report’ examines returnees’ needs in Ethiopia for reintegration and highlights best practices and examples of reintegration assistance in other countries that can be adapted to the Ethiopian context. Furthermore, the report provides an in-depth analysis of the policy environment for return and reintegration in Ethiopia and discusses both migration specific and non-migration specific policies relevant to return and reintegration. By Dr. Katherine Kuschminder et al.
The ‘ILO reintegration package for Ethiopia report’ aims to enhance and strengthen the reintegration support services provision in Ethiopia. This reintegration package is expected to serve as a point of reference and practical guide for the Government of Ethiopia, UN agencies, civil society organisations and other stakeholders to develop programmes in support of the successful reintegration of returnees, back into their community and labour market. This package is a living document that identifies and lists out systems, programmes and activities that need to be put in place to support successful reintegration of returnees. By Dr. Katherine Kuschminder et al.
Working papers
‘Estimating the effects of robotization on exports’ examines the impact of robotization on trade. Specifically, the paper estimates empirically the effect of robotization on total exports, and further examines its effect on the different export margins. It finds robust evidence that robotization increases total exports, and this effect works both along the extensive (number of exported product varieties) and intensive margins (average value of exported product variety). Results obtained using the volume and price of exports suggest that the positive effect of robotization on the intensive margin is driven by increases in both the quantity and unit prices of exports. Redefining the margins as the number of market destinations and the number of product by market destination, the results also show a positive effect of robotization. By PhD fellow Gideon Ndubuisi and Dr. Elvis Avenyo.
‘Artificial intelligence, jobs, inequality and productivity: Does aggregate demand matter?’critically reassesses predictions as to whether rapid technological progress in artificial intelligence (AI) will lead to mass unemployment, rising inequality, and higher productivity growth through automation. The paper does so by (i) surveying the recent literature and (ii) incorporating AI-facilitated automation into a product variety-model, frequently used in endogenous growth theory, but modified to allow for demand-side constraints. By Prof. Wim Naudé et al.
PhD defences
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The opinions expressed here are the authors’ own; they do not necessarily reflect the views of UNU.
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