Three Essays on Firms and Workers Macrodynamics

My research studies how the transition to cleaner technologies reshapes firms and workers, with a focus on the automobile industry. As governments encourage firms to move away from carbon-intensive production, companies must decide whether and when to adopt cleaner technologies, while workers may need to move across plants, firms, or occupations. These changes are not automatic: firms face costs, uncertainty, recruitment difficulties, and workers often have skills tied to existing technologies.

The project develops a theoretical framework to understand these decisions jointly. It shows that firms’ decisions depend on four main forces: the immediate financial incentives created by climate policy, the expected future performance of clean technologies, the risks and opportunities associated with technological uncertainty, and the ease with which firms can recruit workers with the right skills. I apply this framework to the automobile sector using plant-level data from France, Germany, and the United States, comparing how the shift toward electric vehicles takes place through new plants, the conversion of existing plants, and worker reallocation.