The RFBerlin Applied Economics Seminar series brings leading researchers to Berlin to share their latest work and engage with our community. We are pleased to welcome Jonas Loebbing (CES at LMU Munich) for this session.

Jonas Loebbing is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the Center for Economic Studies at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU). His research lies at the intersection of macroeconomics and public economics, with a particular focus on the origins of economic inequality and the development of policies to reduce it.
Professor Loebbing is also a member of the CESifo Research Network. At LMU, he teaches courses on inequality and redistribution policy across the bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral programs in economics.

Event Topic:

Welfare Effects of Automation with Redistributive Taxes

with: Hayato Kato (Osaka University)

Automation shifts income from workers to capital owners and raises income inequality. Can we turn automation into a welfare gain by adjusting the tax and transfer system or is it desirable to restrict automation? We study this question in a setting where capital can move across borders and governments set capital taxes strategically. We derive a sufficient statistics formula for the welfare effects of automation under optimal taxes and assess it quantitatively, showing that negative welfare effects of automation are plausible. Yet, seizing the implied welfare gains requires globally coordinated restrictions on automation, as unilateral policies prove ineffective. The optimal global policy, however, is a cooperative capital tax policy and we show that the welfare gains from such cooperation rise with automation..

Event Details:

Date: 28 October 2025
Time: 14:00–15:15

Participation: the seminar is open to the public and targeted to an academic audience.

f you have any questions or need further information, feel free to contact us using the form or email us at [email protected]