Basic Income and Technological Innovation: an Agent-Based Simulation Facing Structural Changes in Labor Market

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Starting from the theoretical debate about how technological unemployment has developed over time, we focus our analysis on the structural changes it implies in the labor market. In particular, we analyze these issues in the present framework with respect to the introduction of artificial intelligence tools in the productive processes and we propose a basic income hypothesis focusing on consequences it may trigger both on firms' and individuals' decisions. We build a simulation via an Agent Based Model (ABM) by using NetLogo trough which we analyze firms' and individuals' behavior in the labor market. In particular, as long as concerns the supply side, we focus on the link between the probability of being hired for individuals composing the population and their level of skills, whereas, on the demand side, we highlight that some of the features of the firms affect the quantity of labor demanded and some others, instead, affect the level of skills that a firm requires to workers. As a result of the interaction between such agents, we analyze the trend of the unemployment rate and we plug some technological shocks increasing the unemployment rate into this scenario. Finally, we introduce a basic income hypothesis and we test whether it results feasible in such an economy. Once feasibility is shown, we use the basic income hypothesis in order to identify some of the patterns which may affect labor market trends: in particular, we focus on its consequences on firms' investments choices about innovation and on individuals' decisions about training and work-leisure time allocation.