Konstantin M. Wacker

Papers

Total Citations

221

H-Index

About

Konstantin M. Wacker is an economist whose research sits at the intersection of labor economics, international economics, and applied econometrics. He is best known for his influential work on technological change and employment, particularly his examination of how industrial robots are reshaping labor markets across the globe. His landmark 2020 study, "The Rise of Robots and the Fall of Routine Jobs," has garnered over 200 citations and stands as a significant contribution to the growing literature on automation and work. Drawing on robot adoption data across thirty-seven countries between 2005 and 2015, Wacker and his collaborators demonstrated that increased robot use is strongly associated with declining employment shares in routine manual jobs — but crucially, this effect is concentrated in high-income economies rather than emerging markets and transition economies, revealing important heterogeneity in how automation reshapes labor across development contexts. Beyond automation, Wacker has also made methodological contributions to applied econometrics, including developing the correlated interaction term estimator (CITE) for more reliably estimating interaction effects in panel data models. His work equips both policymakers and researchers with sharper tools to understand the forces transforming modern economies.