11/22（土）人事経済学ワークショップ開催のお知らせ / Personnel Economics Workshop on November 22nd

Dear all,

We are happy to announce that the upcoming Personnel Economics Workshop will be held on Saturday, November 22nd.Date: November 22nd(Sat.), 15:00–17:45

Venue: Room 709 in Building 3, Waseda Campus, Waseda University
*The elevator in Building 3 does not stop at the 7th floor, so please use the escalator.
Format: Hybrid
We are planning to have dinner after the workshop.
Please fill in the following form by Friday, November 14th, if you would like to participate.
https://forms.gle/UzQ1Dmw5BgBNoXcXA

Please register the following Zoom link for participants online.
https://list-waseda-jp.zoom.us/meeting/register/bY4idDGuRou_Vbvd00tp5Q

1st session: 15:00-16:00
Speaker: Kazuki Nishikawa,  Graduate School of Economics, The University of Osaka
Language: Japanese
Title:  Automation under relational contracts
Abstract:
I examine firms’ incentives to invest in automation under relational contracts. In these contracts, the lack of formal enforcement mechanisms can lead to worker shirking, thereby strengthening the incentive to automate. At the same time, automation may weaken the firm–worker relationship, creating a countervailing incentive to limit automation in order to preserve its value. The interplay of these opposing forces determines the relative level of automation investment under relational versus formal contracts. From a policy perspective, the results indicate that strengthening workers’ rights does not necessarily raise workers’ surplus.

2nd Session: 16:15-17:45
Speaker: Xuanli Zhu, Keio University
Language: English
Title:  Where is the Bottleneck? The Productivity Paradox of Generative AI
Abstract:
Recent advances in generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools raise concerns about a new productivity paradox of general technology. However, there is little systematic evidence on how large the gap is between GenAI’s theoretical efficiency and actual usage by human workers, and what the key bottlenecks are underlying this productivity gap. By systematically prompting frontier reasoning AI models to predict time savings across tasks and occupations, a new method that has gained rapid popularity in recent AI literature, we find GenAI predicts a positive productivity effect for most occupations, with an average ranging from 11% to 34% depending on prompt design and aggregation methods. Compared to real-world human surveys, this suggests that a large productivity gap exists due to both limited adoption (extensive margin) and inefficient usage (intensive margin). We then conduct counterfactual experiments by varying prompt design to identify various potential bottlenecks. Results reveal that human overhead costs of managing AI and a lack of specialized tools integrated into workflows serve as important constraints to productivity gains, whereas recent AI capability improvements yield minimal additional predicted time savings.

Please check the website of the Personnel Economics Workshop below for the upcoming workshops.
https://sites.google.com/view/peworkshop/home

If you have any questions, please contact the Owan lab, Waseda University, at [email protected]

Best regards,