Lars van Doorn speaker at ESOF2022: ‘A great opportunity in many ways’
From 13 to 16 July, Leiden will host the EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF), the largest multidisciplinary scientific conference in Europe. Lars van Doorn from Leiden Law School will give a presentation.
Lars van Doorn is a PhD candidate at the Department of Economics, Leiden Law School. His areas of interest are the effects of globalisation and technological change on the labour market and the political consequences of these changes. He will speak on this At ESOF2022 during the panel session 'The Future of Work: Opportunities and challenges of digitalisation, the platform economy and flexibilization of European labour markets'. ‘This session will discuss how the world of work has changed in the past decades. We look at what jobs have been lost or created by the rise of technological developments such as information and communication technology (ICT), robotisation and artificial intelligence. What are the economic and political consequences of these developments?’
In his presentation, Van Doorn will focus on the attitudes of working people to different types of policy. ‘In classical political economy, we assume that people with a higher risk of unemployment are in favour of more income redistribution and want to insure this risk by means of a relatively generous safety net. We know, for instance, that workers whose jobs are threatened by automation are highly in favour of redistribution. In my contribution, I’ll be presenting new research with Olaf van Vliet in which we show that not only the risk of unemployment, but also the chance of finding a new job is an important driver when it comes to policy preferences.'
The research focuses on the skills a person needs to exercise a certain profession. When these skills are relevant for a large group of professions, this increases the chances of finding a new job: the people to whom this applies therefore feel relatively more secure on the labour market. ‘We show that this mobility translates into a lower need for social security. Moreover, these individuals are willing to support climate policies that potentially affect jobs in “brown sectors”. Indeed, because they can apply their skills to relatively many occupations, they are less concerned if their initial occupation is affected by, for example, a CO2 tax.'
Horizon Europe
Other speakers from Leiden University during this panel session will be Ron Diris and Olaf van Vliet. In addition, Hanneke Bennaars (University of Amsterdam) and Ferry Koster (Erasmus University Rotterdam) are involved in the session. ‘In our research project, we often collaborate with other universities; for instance, last year we collaborated with colleagues from other universities to publish a thematic issue of a journal on the future of work. And our team recently set up a consortium within the framework of Horizon Europe, in which we are collaborating with several European universities to conduct research on the future of the labour market and social security in Europe.'
Van Doorn is looking forward to ESOF2022 for a number of reasons. ‘For me it’s first and foremost a great opportunity to present our research to a wider audience. I’m looking forward to the dynamics this will bring. Also, because of all the issues related to coronavirus, this is the first physical conference where I’ll be presenting our research. A more than welcome change after all the presentations for a wall of faces on a screen in recent years!’
The panel session ‘The Future of Work: Opportunities and challenges of digitalization, the platform economy and flexibilization of European labour markets’ will take place on Thursday 14 July from 17.15 to 18.30 in the Stadsgehoorzaal in Leiden. Interested? Leiden University students and staff get a discount on ESOF2022 tickets. Check out which speakers from Leiden Law School will be taking part here.