Jacopo Staccioli

About

Jacopo Staccioli is an economist and innovation scholar whose research sits at the intersection of technological change, automation, and labor markets. His work has made significant contributions to our understanding of how labour-saving technologies shape employment, occupations, and wages — both historically and in the present day. A defining feature of Staccioli's research is his pioneering use of patent analysis and natural language processing to identify and measure labour-saving innovation. By mining patent texts for explicit mechanization and automation heuristics, he has produced some of the first direct, empirical measures of occupational exposure to robotic technologies. His most cited paper, "Robots and the origin of their labour-saving impact" (2022, 84 citations), exemplifies this approach, while "Back to the past" (2021, 62 citations) extends the analysis deep into nineteenth-century U.S. patent history, revealing the long-run roots of automation. Beyond measurement, Staccioli has critically synthesized the broader empirical literature on technology and employment, helping researchers navigate three distinct waves of scholarly debate. His work spans quantitative patent analysis, occupational exposure modeling, and qualitative case studies in service-sector automation. With nearly 340 cumulative citations across his leading publications, Staccioli has rapidly established himself as a key voice in the future-of-work conversation.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   Robots and the origin of their labour-saving impact

   84 citations · 2022
2. 2
   Back to the past: the historical roots of labor-saving automation

   62 citations · 2021
3. 3
   Labour-saving technologies and employment levels

   46 citations · 2022
4. 4
   The empirics of technology, employment and occupations: Lessons learned and challenges ahead

   44 citations · 2023
5. 5
   Automation and related technologies: a mapping of the new knowledge base

   34 citations · 2022
6. 6
   Labour‐saving automation: A direct measure of occupational exposure

   24 citations · 2023
7. 7
   The Present, Past, and Future of Labor-Saving Technologies

   19 citations · 2021
8. 8
   Innovation and the labor market: theory, evidence, and challenges

   15 citations · 2023
9. 9
   Innovation and the Labor Market: Theory, Evidence and Challenges

   9 citations · 2023
10. 10
    Case studies of automation in services

    5 citations · 2022

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links