Emanuel Gasteiger

Iscte – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa

Papers

Total Citations

121

H-Index

About

Emanuel Gasteiger is a macroeconomist whose research sits at the intersection of automation, economic growth, and intergenerational dynamics. His most influential work examines how the rise of automation and robotics affects long-run economic growth, challenging optimistic narratives about technology-driven prosperity. In his highly cited 2020 study, which has garnered 89 citations, Gasteiger demonstrates through an overlapping generations framework that automation — despite generating constant returns to capital akin to AK growth models — paradoxically fails to produce sustained long-run growth. The critical mechanism he identifies is automation's suppression of wage income, which undermines the savings and investment behavior of successive generations. This insight extends and refines his earlier 2017 working paper (32 citations), which first established that automation alone lacks the potential to generate positive long-run growth. A significant policy contribution of his work is the rigorous evaluation of a "robot tax" as a corrective instrument, making his research directly relevant to contemporary debates on technology regulation and inequality. Gasteiger's scholarship offers essential analytical clarity for students and policymakers grappling with the economic consequences of an increasingly automated world.