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About

Gaaitzen J. de Vries is an economist whose research sits at the intersection of labor economics, technological change, and international development. He is best known for his pioneering work on the relationship between industrial automation and labor market transformation, particularly his influential study "The Rise of Robots and the Fall of Routine Jobs" (2020), which has garnered over 200 citations and stands as a landmark contribution to understanding how robotic adoption reshapes employment structures. Drawing on data from 37 countries spanning 2005 to 2015, de Vries and his collaborators demonstrated that increased robot deployment is significantly associated with declining employment shares in routine manual occupations — but crucially, this effect is concentrated in high-income economies, with emerging and transition economies largely unaffected by the same dynamic. This nuanced, cross-national perspective has proven especially valuable for policymakers navigating automation's uneven global footprint. De Vries has also extended his analysis to Latin America, contributing to broader conversations about how accelerating automation intersects with regional trade integration and economic development. His work equips researchers, students, and policymakers with rigorous empirical tools to anticipate and respond to the ongoing transformation of work in the age of intelligent machines.