This thesis explores the potential of increased recycling rates as a strategy to mitigate emissions, reduce waste accumulation, and alleviate material depletion across diverse regions and socioeconomic contexts. By developing and applying the JUSTICE-MATTER model, this research advances our understanding of how recycling, as a key component of a circular economy, can be integrated into broader climate policy frameworks to achieve sustainability goals.

The research methodology involved the development of a comprehensive matter use module based on the economy-wide material flow analysis (ew-MFA) framework that tracks material flows from extraction to disposal. This MATTER module provides a granular understanding of material usage across 57 regions, considering regional disparities in resources, economic activities, and socio-economic conditions. The JUSTICE-MATTER model integrates these material flows with climate and economic modules, offering a nuanced evaluation of how recycling policies impact emissions reductions, economic output, and material depletion under different Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs).

The findings highlight that recycling plays a significant role in reducing waste and conserving material resources, especially in regions with underdeveloped waste management systems. The transition to a Circular Economy (CE) in regions like Southeast Asia, Brazil, and parts of Africa resulted in substantial reductions in waste generation and material depletion. However, the impact of recycling on emissions reduction was found to be relatively modest, particularly in high-emission regions like China and Brazil. This suggests that while recycling is essential, it must be complemented by other strategies, such as transitioning to cleaner energy sources and implementing comprehensive emissions control policies, to achieve meaningful emissions reductions.

Economically, the effects of increased recycling rates varied significantly across regions. Regions with established recycling infrastructure, particularly in Europe, experienced minimal economic disruption from higher recycling rates. In contrast, regions like Chile and Brazil faced higher economic costs due to the need for substantial investment in upgrading recycling systems. These findings underscore the importance of tailoring recycling strategies to regional contexts, considering the economic and infrastructural disparities that influence the feasibility and impact of such initiatives.

The research highlights the importance of region-specific policies, emphasising differentiated approaches that address the unique challenges and opportunities of each region. While developed regions may focus on optimizing recycling processes, developing regions must prioritize infrastructure and capacity-building efforts. Despite the advancements in the JUSTICE-MATTER model, limitations such as static emission factors and a narrow focus on certain materials suggest areas for future refinement. Future research should incorporate dynamic emission factors, expand material analysis, and regionalise key parameters to reflect diverse economic and material use patterns more accurately.

In conclusion, this thesis contributes to advancing Integrated Assessment Models by integrating material flow dynamics into the JUSTICE-MATTER framework. Addressing the identified limitations and pursuing suggested future research directions will enhance the model’s capacity to guide global sustainability efforts and offer more robust policy recommendations for the complex challenges of the future.

Refineries in the Port of Rotterdam (PoR) account for 20% of Dutch industrial and 6% of national CO2 emissions, with high temperature heat emissions representing 70% of this total. Decarbonising these refinery operations is challenging, with the EU and Dutch CO2 reduction targets consisting of 55% reduction by 2030, 90% by 2040 and 100% by 2050.

Blue hydrogen is seen as a promising solution for decarbonising high temperature heat within refineries. However, existing studies have primarily focused on the technical and commercial feasibility from a corporate perspective, lacking a comprehensive, holistic view. This is relevant since the government is obliged to reach the decarbonisation targets. This research aimed to determine the cost and benefits of using blue hydrogen for the decarbonisation of high temperature heat within PoR refineries from the public and corporate perspective, in alignment with Dutch/EU net zero targets in 2050.

The main research question which was answered is: What are the costs and benefits of using blue hydrogen for the decarbonisation of high temperature heat generation within refineries in the Port of Rotterdam considering the Dutch/EU net zero targets in 2050, from the perspective of the corporate versus the public?

A Social Cost Benefit Analysis (SCBA) under EU guidelines was conducted, comparing a business as usual (BAU) reference case, which is not reaching the climate targets, with a blue hydrogen intervention scenario. The intervention scenario resulted in an overall CO2 reduction of 44.4 Mt between 2024 and 2050, needed to reach EU and Dutch decarbonisation targets.

After identifying all effects resulting from the intervention scenario, the cost and benefits of both perspectives could be assessed. This study finds significant differences in valuation between the corporate and public perspective. The corporate Net Present Value (NPV) is 172MEUR, while the public NPV Is 8,834 MEUR. This underscores that societal and environmental benefits are not captured in corporate metrics. This is primarily due to the undervalued Corporate CO2 EU ETS price compared to the Social Cost of Carbon. Addressing this gap may require policy measures such as increasing the EU ETS or the local Dutch CO2 Levy. Further research should assess mechanisms to align CO2 pricing with true external costs.

As global temperatures rise, the need for sustainability becomes more urgent. Reducing reliance on fossil fuels and other CO2 emitting energy sources is critical, making a shift to renewable alternatives such as offshore wind power essential. This study examines offshore wind farms in the North Sea, an area that presents both significant opportunities and challenges for a wide range of stakeholders. While the potential benefits are clear, the development of offshore wind farms is a complex undertaking and companies are continuously working on innovative solutions to improve their implementation. In particular, this thesis focuses on curtailment of offshore wind farms in the North Sea.

Curtailment means halting the operation of offshore wind turbines entirely or reducing the speed to a maximum of two rotations per minute. Curtailment is initiated when negative energy prices occur. Initially, it may appear that negative energy prices are not a significant issue. However, they are generally disadvantageous to consumers due to their disruptive effect on market balance. Furthermore, curtailment is initiated for the sake of grid stability. When there is a surplus of energy, grid instability occurs. This should be prevented to prevent power outages. Most importantly, when curtailment is initiated, bird mortalities are prevented. When offshore wind turbines halt their operation entirely or reduce the speed to a maximum of two rotations per minute, birds do not collide with offshore wind turbine blades, therefore preventing bird mortalities.

Curtailment in the Netherlands is initiated during nights of migration periods in Autumn and Spring, when a threshold of 500 birds per kilometre per hour are migrating. The way this works is that virtual kilometres are studied using bird radars, when 500 birds or more cross this virtual line in an hour, this implies mass migration. There is a downside of curtailing for the sake of offshore wind farms for the sake of preventing bird mortalities. If energy demand is not met due to the absence of the wind energy because of curtailment, gas-fired power plants are compensating this loss of energy. The gas-fired power plants use natural gas to produce energy. Gas fired power plants consequently emit CO2. This implies that the Netherlands is willing to prevent bird mortalities while emitting CO2. This raises the following ethical issue and main research question: When, if ever, is curtailment ethically acceptable in offshore wind farms in the North Sea?

To answer this ethical research question, different ethical approached are studied, two in particular, consequentialism and non-consequentialism. Utilitarianism is derived from consequentialism, which is an ethical theory that focuses on the consequences of the actions taken. Non-consequentialism theories, in which the consequences of the actions taken are not all that matters, but places greater emphasis on the actions taken than on the consequences of those actions. In the field of ethics, it is not possible to satisfy both consequentialist and
non-consequentialist perspectives simultaneously. Consequently, a choice must be made between the two. This thesis accepts a consequentialist approach and therefore rejects the non-consequentialist approach. The primary reason for this choice is that, according to consequentialist theories, there is a greater moral obligation to prevent suffering than according to non-consequentialist theories.

The consequences of curtailment for the sake of preventing bird mortalities is emitting CO2. Emitting CO2 affects both the environment and humans. This thesis focuses mainly on the consequences of these additional CO2 emissions for humans. In this thesis the framework of Disability-adjusted Life Years (DALYs) is used. One DALY is the equivalent of one healthy year of a person’s life lost. DALYs consist of Years of Life Lost (YLLs) and Years Lived with a Disability (YLD). Additional CO2 emissions result in DALYs of human beings. In other words, by preventing bird mortalities the Netherlands are willing to emit CO2, which eventually leads to the loss of a human life.

To derive exact amounts, a hypothetical curtailment scenario is assessed. The hypothetical curtailment scenario uses the offshore wind farm ‘Borssele’, real-life data and secondary data to derive exact amounts of the consequences of curtailment. Exact amounts include bird migration fluxes, number of bird mortalities prevented, amount of additional tons of CO2 emissions, the monetary costs of additional tons of CO2, the amount of DALYs per emitted ton of CO2, the cost of one DALY, the amount of DALYs per hypothetical curtailment scenario and
the amount of curtailment scenarios lead to the loss of one entire human life.

The offshore wind farm Borselle, with its 173 offshore wind turbines, are tested using three bird migration fluxes: the current threshold of 500 birds kilometre per hour, twice the threshold namely 1,000 birds kilometre per hour, and real-life data from the night of October 19/20 2022 of 1,386 birds kilometre per hour. The conclusion of these different bird migration fluxes is that for the bird migration flux of 500 birds per kilometre per hour, one human life is lost while 7,110 bird mortalities are prevented. For the bird migration flux of 1,000 birds per kilometre per hour, one human life is lost while 14,220 bird mortalities are prevented. And for the real-life data bird migration flux of 1,386 birds per kilometre per hour, one human life is lost while 19,710 bird mortalities are prevented. One human life is lost due to the fact that additional CO2 emissions result in DALYs.

The question arises why or why not, people ought to be indifferent between a number of bird lives and one human life, thus a trolley problem arises. A trolley problem is an ethical thought experiment in which a decision must be made regarding the trajectory of a trolley on either Track A or Track B. The decision is made by pulling a lever, which determines the path of the trolley. In a trolley problem, individuals, animals, or other entities are situated on both tracks. The individuals, animals, or other entities on the track the trolley is headed to are killed,
whereas those on the other track are spared. This means that in this trolley problem, people ought to choose between a human life, or a number of bird lives, depending on the threshold of the bird migration flux.

If the objective is to preserve human life, the curtailment of offshore wind farms is never justified when additional CO2 is required to meet energy demand. Indeed, this would imply that saving any animal, even if it entails the emission of the slightest amount of CO2 emissions, would be considered ethically unjustifiable. Consequently, animal-friendly facilities such as wildlife crossings, artificial birdhouses, bee hotels or fencing for wildlife protection are deemed unjustifiable as manufacturing facilities, given that such facilities emit CO2 as a by-product of their production process.

Another framework used to determine whether or not to be indifferent between the life of a human being and a number of animals, is welfare ranges. The ‘Moral Weight Project’ obtained welfare ranges for 11 farmed animal species. A welfare range is a spectrum in which a human or an animal can feel pleasures and pains. Assuming that welfare is not exclusively important for humans but rather for all entities, it can be determined how much welfare an exact number of animals could achieve compared to one human being. The framework of the Moral Weight Project ought people to be indifferent between one human being and 19 birds. This would imply that the threshold of the bird migration flux ought to be decreased to 1.4 birds per kilometre per hour. If this is the right course of action, the Netherlands ought to curtail every single night during Autumn and Spring. This view is rejected in this thesis as this implies that offshore wind farms ought to curtail at a very low threshold.

Another way to determine welfare ranges for birds is by looking at the number of neurons in bird’s brains compared to neurons of a human being. A reason to use neurons to derive a welfare range is as more neurons in a brain means greater cognitive capacity, meaning that a certain number of neurons is needed in order to be capable of complex thinking. Comparing the number of neurons of birds to the number of neurons humans have, lowers the welfare range for birds significantly compared to the Moral Weight Project. This changes the indifference ratio of one human being and 19 birds, to one human being and 3,019 birds.

It should be acknowledged that, given the ethical focus of this thesis, some readers may not agree with the theories and assumptions presented. In this study, certain assumptions will be made, although people may have alternative perspectives. This report does not aim to provide a comprehensive response to the assumptions. Although some theories and assumptions will be subjected to criticism, in certain instances, the assumptions made are the most probable estimates, given the inherent uncertainties.

Since the conception of the euro, it has often been suggested that the eurozone start a programme of jointly issuing government debt. There are many arguments for these so-called Eurobonds, and temporary issuance of them has already taken place in response to the economic impact of the recent COVID-19 pandemic. However, a permanent Eurobond programme remains a controversial topic within the EU.
Advocates claim that a Eurobond programme can facilitate economic growth and stability for the entire eurozone. It could offer much-needed fiscal space to some of the eurozone’s most heavily indebted southern economies, by decreasing borrowing costs. It is assumed that the extra growth facilitated in these countries will spill over to the rest (mostly the less indebted north) of the eurozone, through increased cross-country trade and investment. Criticism mostly originates from the more financially sound eurozone member states, which fear a situation of moral hazard that leads to uncontrolled spending, and a possible deterioration of their own creditworthiness.
This research attempts to explore the economic effects of the introduction of Eurobonds on the eurozone economies. For this effort, two distinct types of Eurobonds are identified and analysed: unlimited Eurobonds and Blue Bond Eurobonds, with the former allowing unlimited issuance of mutualised debt, and the latter restricting this to 60% of a country’s GDP.
The economic sub systems that are crucial for explaining the dynamics relevant to this study show a high degree of complexity and uncertainty; whether it is the dynamics of debt management (including stocks, flows, delays and feedback mechanisms), the different ways of determining bond yields (these are structural uncertainties), or the magnitude of economic elasticities/sensitivities (these are parametric uncertainties). These system characteristics stress the need for a simulation modelling approach. Because the interactions between the system’s components and the relative importance of certain elements are of interest, and because the results should be insightful to non-technical policy-makers, a transparent, ‘white-box’ model can provide the most meaningful results. For these reasons, a system dynamics model has been developed for this study.
Specifically, an exploratory system dynamics modelling and analysis approach is used, due to the inherent structural and parametric uncertainties related to the system that have to be accounted for. Through exploratory experimentation with this model, the effectiveness of both Eurobond policies has been assessed based on how they affect eurozone and country-specific GDP, interest rates, and debt levels. All experimental results are robust for the different structural and parametric uncertainties identified in the system; multiple methods of determining bond yields taken have been into account, just as a large number of configurations of the parametric uncertainties.
As for the economic growth facilitated by both Eurobond policies, the country-level results are mostly insignificant (i.e., not more than 0.50% additional GDP growth after 10 years). Only slight increases in GDP are observed for both policies, with the benefits not evenly distributed amongst member states. Southern, more heavily indebted economies have more to gain, due to the larger relative decrease in their borrowing costs, assuming that the additional funding is spent productively. Furthermore, the anticipated positive economic spill-over effects caused by increased cross-country trade and investment (and not attributed decreases in interest rates) are shown to be insignificant as well.
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However, the results of the analysis do indicate that both unlimited and Blue Bond Eurobonds have the potential to offer significant benefits to the eurozone’s economic stability, by reducing borrowing costs for all participating countries. As anticipated, it is again mostly the heavily indebted southern economies that benefit from this. Unlimited Eurobonds offer slightly more benefits to these countries, when compared to Blue Bond Eurobonds. However, the latter is the preferred option for the less indebted north, since it restricts debt issuance and subsequently prevents Eurobond yields from surpassing their current borrowing costs; something will eventually be the case with unlimited Eurobonds.
Based on this study’s results, a recommendation is made to start the implementation of (a variant of) the Blue Bond Eurobond policy. It has the potential to significantly increase the eurozone’s public debt sustainability, while also offering minor (mostly insignificant) growth benefits to the heavily indebted southern member states, without deteriorating the creditworthiness and the fiscal position of the other, northern member states. Furthermore, the existing market pressure for prudent fiscal behaviour is maintained in the Blue Bond Eurobond proposal, mitigating the risks of moral hazard feared by critics of debt mutualisation.
Additionally, it is necessary to set up an adequate legal and political framework that incentivises fiscal discipline and does not allow for free-riding behaviour. A transfer of fiscal sovereignty to the EU level is to be a requirement for participation in the Eurobond programme. This is necessary to build confidence in the system, both for the eurozone member states, as for the capital markets and the general public. It is further deemed sensible to include a legal clause in the Eurobond programme that allows for the suspension of individual member states’ participation. The (budgetary) conditions for such a clause to be invoked, and the potential (financial) penalties associated with this remain to be decided upon by the eurozone member states and the EU’s (to-be erected) fiscal and monetary institutions.
Keywords: Eurobonds, Bond yield determination, Debt sustainability, Macroeconomic analysis, Policy analysis, Exploratory Modelling and Analysis

Humanity faces the unprecedented global challenge of climate change. The sheer complexity and uncertainty of this problem renders mere intuitive reasoning insufficient. To aid global climate negotiations, Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) are used to analyze the interplay between climate and the economy. More specifically, IAMs account for how greenhouse gas emissions affect climate change, how climate change affects economic production, and how economic production affects GHG emissions. We can use IAMs to project trends in emissions and gross domestic product, assess the costs and benefits of climate policies, and estimate the social carbon cost required to achieve stated emissions reduction targets. Although IAMs are central to informing decision-making to avoid catastrophic consequences, policy recommendations resulting from IAMs commonly prompt a very heterogeneous distribution of risks and benefits across the globe. During the recent 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), it became clear that equity is a central issue in the climate action debate. Emerging economies consider currently suggested abatement policies unjust in light of the historical CO2 generation of high-income countries and the strongly increasing need for energy in low-income countries. The term double inequality has been coined to describe the inverse relationship between the distributions of risks and responsibilities. In fact, the regions that are the least responsible for historical and mostly current CO2 emissions around the world, exhibit the highest degree of vulnerability to climate damages. In order to enable international cooperation and have a shot at meeting the Paris Agreement target, we require policies that promote more equitable mitigation pathways. Equity is therefore an eminently pressing topic, yet most IAM studies largely neglect it due to the implicit use of a utilitarian social welfare function that aggregates risks and benefits over space and time, thus losing sight of distributional consequences.

In order to account for distributional justice, we transform the RICE model into a simulation model and embed it in a many-objective simulation-optimization setup such that we can find Pareto-optimal climate mitigation pathways for different problem formulations. Next to using four ethical premises (rooted in utilitarianism, sufficientarianism, egalitarianism, and prioritarianism), we also direct particular attention to the disaggregation of utility and disutility within each of these ethical premises. The reason for this disaggregation is based on the incommensurability of these two. Usually, IAMs maximize aggregate variables such as welfare. If we also consider the minimization of welfare loss, which is based on economic damages as one of the objectives, we can enable a potentially fairer distribution of not only consumption but economic damages. We argue that we can find climate justice behind the veil of aggregation. What we mean by this is that more equitable policy recommendations are obscured and lie hidden behind a bulwark of highly aggregated variables. If we look beyond this obstruction by the means of disaggregation, we are better equipped to find climate justice. In order to get to the bottom of this, we ask the following question:

How are Pareto-optimal climate abatement pathways affected by the disaggregation of utility and disutility in alternative ethical problem formulations when using an integrated assessment model under deep uncertainty?

To answer this question, we use a framework that is called multi-scenario multi-objective robust decision-making. For each of the eight problem formulations (4 ethical premises x 2 levels of aggregation), we use a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm to find Pareto-optimal policies. We reevaluate their performances under uncertainty by comparing their climate abatement pathways across the problem formulations. On a high-level, we can summarize our key findings as:

- dominance of aggregation levels over ethical premises
- correlation between low welfare and high welfare loss
- general dominance of egalitarian aggregated Pareto-optimal policies
- shared misery via egalitarian disaggregated Pareto-optimal policies

The effect of disaggregating utility and disutility is stronger than originally expected. Using disaggregated problem formulations yields substantially different pathways even within the same ethical premise. These results are promising as we could transfer these insights to other more complex IAMs such as IMAGE and MESSAGE. Overall, this could be also good news for the equity debate. Using alternative ethical premises and disaggregating incommensurate objectives such as utility and disutility can offer alternative policy recommendations and resulting climate abatement pathways which could in turn enable more equity. What we likely need now, is a stronger dialogue between the modelers and policy analysts on the one side and the stakeholders and decision-makers on the other side. The latter ones should not just blindly trust in the magical outputs of a model but they need to be involved to decide what problem formulations we need to use as there is no correct way to frame a complex real-world problem. As unmitigated climate damages exhibit an independent impact on a region's well-being, we could render IAMs more useful for climate policy if we a) acknowledge that the classical notion of welfare is obsolete, b) use a multi-objective approach, and c) let the decision-makers decide how they want to trade-off the various objectives in post. In this manner, we could use IAMs to advance into the direction of enabling a transition of more climate justice.

In 2014 the Chinese government announced implementation of a so-called ‘Social Credit System’ which should solve three existential threats China is facing: 1. instability of the financial credit sector, 2. limitations in financial services, and 3. threats of social instability. By increasing the collection and centralization of (personal) data, which would result in increased control and transparency, the financial sector should be stabilized and penetration of financial services should increase. Additionally, social instability would be addressed by social management, in which good behaviours are rewarded and bad ones are punished, eventually inducing mechanisms of self-regulation. Although the system aims to solve existential issues China struggles with, the system has gotten a lot of criticism mainly coming from non-Chinese sources. Whereas most studies have focused on how the systems works, aim of this thesis has been to provide insight into the opinion and approval of individuals on SCSs. Based on a survey conducted among Chinese and Dutch respondents strong and higher levels of approval were found among Chinese respondents. Mostly, this higher approval among Chinese respondent can be attributed to the almost negligible share of disapproving Chinese respondents. An explanation to the lower share of disapproving Chinese respondents can be found in the explanatory factors that were identified for both samples, which are: 1. perception whether SCSs would increase accountability taken for actions, and 2. perception whether SCSs increase quality-of-life. As both variables were positively correlated with approval, the correlates show Chinese respondents perceive SCSs more as benefit-generating than Dutch respondents. Furthermore, another interesting correlate showing a positive relation which was only found for the Chinese sample, is trust in government with personal data. As Chinese respondents also reported a nationwide SCS should be run by the government, privacy concerns of approving Chinese respondents most likely is low (or even absent) for government-run SCSs.

Decreasing the CO2 footprint related to business and commuter travel for companies presents a multitude of challenges. These challenges range from finding the objections of employees regarding EVs, and ways to overcome them, to determining what an ideal composition of a car fleet would be. At the same time the financial feasibility of all theses challenges have to be taken into account. If no (financial) benefits can be gained, a company is less likely to implement measures to reduce its CO2 emissions. Building on this, the main aim of this thesis is thus to find the barriers against electric driving for company car drivers in The Netherlands and find ways in which the company can aid in overcoming these barriers. Additionally, this research presents a thorough and general investigation into the yield and costs accompanying the installment of rooftop solar systems.  To determine the barriers amongst employees, a quantitative survey was conducted with 176 respondents. The survey was analyzed and generated with the help of TAM, and the results were then used to create three different CO2 reduction scenarios. After which it was possible to calculate cost and benefits associated with each individual scenario. In doing so the one-off and yearly investment costs were determined for both employer and employee. Based on the research done it is concluded that the barriers against the transition to EVs are similar for company car drivers and private car owners.  It is also concluded that the barriers found are similar for all companies in The Netherlands. Furthermore, by driving electrically, while commuting, companies can easily reach a CO2 reduction of 21.0%.  If companies then also use their rooftops to generate electricity, that can be used to charge the EVs, an additional savings can be realized of, in this case, 9.0%

Real investment within non-financial corporations has been steadily decreasing in the last fifty years, as increased payout to shareholders is seen as one of the main causes . Chetty & Saez (2006) argue that taxes on profits, dividend payout and capital gain also have a negative impact on payout, and thus real investment in non-financial firms. However, it is unknown if corporate governance can explain this relationship between taxes and real investment. An agent-based financial market was built to research which types of corporate governance can explain the effect of taxes on the real investment rate. The results show that a corporate governance based on maximizing shareholder value and minimizing interest payments can explain the effect of taxes on the real investment rate. To further define the effect of corporate governance on the real investment rate, an agent-based macroeconomic model can be built that would incorporate more feedback loops of investment and payout and endogenous growth of earnings of firms.

In this thesis the goal is to determine the mitigation potential, below 100$ per ton of CO₂e, of nine climate mitigation measures in 2030 for the G20 and world regions across six sectors. The mitigation potentials for these measures was determined using a bottom-up approach utilizing recent literature, and where needed by up-scaling found results along assumed variables. The determined mitigation potentials are compared with the emissions gaps between a current policy scenario and scenarios limiting temperature rise below 1.5 and 2 degrees compared to pre-industrial levels. These emission gaps are estimated to be 18-22 GtCO₂e, and 24-27 GtCO₂e, respectively. Further, the found mitigation potentials are compared with the nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to the Paris climate accord of the G20 member states. It was found that the global mitigation potential for the nine treated measures in 2030 is 19-27 GtCO₂e. Subsequently, it is concluded that the emission gaps can both be closed if the mitigation potentials for the nine measures are realized, and that the NDCsof the G20 countries can be achieved in 2030 by a large margin. Finally, it is concluded that the G20 has a mitigation potential of 14.4-20 GtCO₂e in 2030 and thus has a significant share in the envisioned mitigation potential.

Technological progress and innovation have significantly contributed to global economic growth, societal advancement, and higher living standards. However, there is growing concern over the future that lies ahead because of increasing robotisation and progress in artificial intelligence (AI), which are feared to cause significant loss of labour demand. The body of posterior economic scientific work addressing this topic mostly concludes on a positive note. Namely, recent technological advancements have resulted in a net increase in labour demand, but this demand is redistributed to different tasks and occupations. Yet, future oriented research, most notably by Frey and Osborne (2017), has sparked a debate on the future of work due to estimations that indicate that over 40% of jobs will become automatable in the next 20 years. Therefore, the societal question remains: Robots and Artificial Intelligence, the new economic motor or downfall of the working class?...