TY - JOUR
T1 - Labour-saving heuristics in green patents: A natural language processing analysis
AU - Rughi, T.
AU - Staccioli, Jacopo
AU - Virgillito, Maria Enrica
PY - 2025
Y1 - 2025
N2 - This paper provides a direct understanding of the labour-saving threats embedded in decarbonisation pathways. It starts with a mapping of the technological innovations characterised by both climate change mitigation/adaptation (green) and labour-saving attributes. To accomplish this, we draw on the universe of patent grants in the USPTO since 1976 to 2021 reporting the Y02-Y04S tagging scheme and we identify those patents embedding an explicit labour-saving heuristic via a dependency parsing algorithm. We characterise their technological, sectoral and time evolution. Finally, after constructing an index of sectoral penetration of LS and non-LS green patents, we explore its correlation with employment share growth at the state level in the US. Our evidence shows that employment shares in sectors characterised by a higher exposure to LS (non-LS) technologies present an overall negative (positive) growth dynamics.
AB - This paper provides a direct understanding of the labour-saving threats embedded in decarbonisation pathways. It starts with a mapping of the technological innovations characterised by both climate change mitigation/adaptation (green) and labour-saving attributes. To accomplish this, we draw on the universe of patent grants in the USPTO since 1976 to 2021 reporting the Y02-Y04S tagging scheme and we identify those patents embedding an explicit labour-saving heuristic via a dependency parsing algorithm. We characterise their technological, sectoral and time evolution. Finally, after constructing an index of sectoral penetration of LS and non-LS green patents, we explore its correlation with employment share growth at the state level in the US. Our evidence shows that employment shares in sectors characterised by a higher exposure to LS (non-LS) technologies present an overall negative (positive) growth dynamics.
KW - Climate change mitigation
KW - Labour markets
KW - Search heuristics
KW - Natural language processing
KW - Labour-saving technologies
KW - Climate change mitigation
KW - Labour markets
KW - Search heuristics
KW - Natural language processing
KW - Labour-saving technologies
UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10807/306197
U2 - 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2024.108497
DO - 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2024.108497
M3 - Article
SN - 0921-8009
VL - 230
SP - N/A-N/A
JO - Ecological Economics
JF - Ecological Economics
ER -