Thor Berger

University of Oxford, Research Institute of Industrial Economics

Papers

Total Citations

201

H-Index

About

Thor Berger is an economist whose research sits at the intersection of technological change, labor markets, and social mobility. His work investigates how automation and industrial robots reshape economic opportunity — not just for current workers, but across generations and political landscapes. Berger's most influential contribution, "Political Machinery: Did Robots Swing the 2016 US Presidential Election?" (2018, 163 citations), draws a provocative line between labor market disruption caused by automation and the political realignment that brought Donald Trump to power. By connecting technological displacement to voting behavior, Berger demonstrated that the consequences of automation extend far beyond the factory floor into the democratic process itself — a finding that resonated widely across economics, political science, and public policy circles. His subsequent research on industrial automation and intergenerational income mobility reveals another dimension of automation's long shadow: communities with higher robot adoption exhibit significantly lower rates of upward mobility across 722 U.S. labor markets. This work positions automation not merely as a short-term labor shock, but as a structural force entrenching inequality across generations. Together, Berger's contributions offer a compelling and sobering account of how technological progress, despite its aggregate benefits, can quietly fracture the social and political fabric of communities left behind.