Klaus Prettner

About

Klaus Prettner is a prominent economist whose research sits at the intersection of automation, technological change, labor markets, and economic inequality. Based at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, Prettner has established himself as one of the leading voices examining how robotics and artificial intelligence reshape modern economies. His most influential contributions interrogate the distributional consequences of automation. His 2019 work on innovation, automation, and inequality — now cited over 177 times — uses sophisticated R&D-driven growth models to demonstrate that automation disproportionately disadvantages low-skilled workers while complementing their high-skilled counterparts, a finding reinforced across multiple subsequent papers. His research on robots and reshoring (170 citations) further extends this analysis to global labor markets, showing how automation reconfigures international production chains. Prettner's work also ventures beyond purely economic outcomes. His 2024 study linking industrial robot adoption to workers' mental health — drawing on German Socioeconomic Panel data — reflects a broadening of the field's analytical lens. Meanwhile, his theoretical contributions on robot taxation and long-run stagnation have directly informed policy debates about governing automation's societal costs. Collectively accumulating nearly 800 citations, Prettner's scholarship provides indispensable frameworks for understanding one of the defining economic challenges of the twenty-first century.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   Innovation, automation, and inequality: Policy challenges in the race against the machine

   177 citations · 2019
2. 2
   Robots, reshoring, and the lot of low-skilled workers

   170 citations · 2021
3. 3
   How can robots affect wage inequality?

   116 citations · 2019
4. 4
   AUTOMATION, STAGNATION, AND THE IMPLICATIONS OF A ROBOT TAX

   89 citations · 2020
5. 5
   Innovation, automation, and inequality: Policy challenges in the race against the machine

   59 citations
6. 6
   Are they coming for us? Industrial robots and the mental health of workers

   55 citations · 2024
7. 7
   Automation and population growth: Theory and cross-country evidence

   38 citations · 2023
8. 8
   A Note on Automation, Stagnation, and the Implications of a Robot Tax

   32 citations · 2017
9. 9
   Robots, Reshoring, and the Lot of Low-Skilled Workers

   21 citations · 2018
10. 10
    Stagnant wages in the face of rising labor productivity: The potential role of industrial robots

    19 citations · 2023

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links