Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/173091 
Year of Publication: 
2017
Series/Report no.: 
ZEW Discussion Papers No. 15-078 [rev.]
Version Description: 
This version: September 2017
Publisher: 
Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung (ZEW), Mannheim
Abstract: 
Economic restructuring provides an opportunity for socially valuable product and process innovation. However, it's not clear whether displaced workers engage in socially useful activities as well. This question is particularly pressing when the advancement of computer technology creates the destructive force to replace many jobs with robotic labor and artificial intelligence. Leveraging German district-level and European country-level data we analyze the relationship between the economic crisis in 2008-2010 and a socially useful online activity - contributions to the largest online encyclopedia Wikipedia. We find increased contributions to the socially valuable activity in the form of knowledge acquisition and contributions to Wikipedia. We analyze both content generation at the European Country level and at the German district level. For German districts, we observe an increase in the rate of content generation on Wikipedia more severely affected districts. These effects get even stronger in our analysis at the European country level.
Subjects: 
online platform
Wikipedia
public goods
unemployment
user generated content
JEL: 
D29
D80
H41
J60
L17
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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