--- title: "Simulating a Post-Automation Economy · AI Fault Line" url: https://aifaultline.com/research/p/title-3347bb38bfccc2c8/ description: "AI Fault Line is a neutral, evidence-cited field guide to why experts looking at the same developments disagree about AI's effect on productivity, jobs, inequality, regulation and the pace of change." --- [Research](https://aifaultline.com/research/) # Simulating a Post-Automation Economy Leonard Wossnig · arXiv · 7 Jun 2026 [Read original source](https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.20649v1) Open access Where this sits in the debate - [Will AI destroy more jobs than it creates?](https://aifaultline.com/debate/jobs/) - [Will AI widen inequality?](https://aifaultline.com/debate/inequality/) · its finding: it depends ([why studies differ](https://aifaultline.com/debate/inequality/#why)) - [Should governments act on AI now?](https://aifaultline.com/debate/regulation/) · its finding supports the claim ([why studies differ](https://aifaultline.com/debate/regulation/#why)) Direction of the finding as read from the abstract by an AI model ([AI-written](https://aifaultline.com/about/)). ## Abstract We develop an agent-based, stock-ow-consistent model of an economy undergoing automation, built to ask which scal instrument reaches the durable surplus that articial intelligence creates. The model separates two channels: a competitive return on reproducible robotic capital, and a mobile, foreign-held intellectual-property rent earned by AI. Production is an endogenous nested-CES technology; wealth concentration is microfounded through heterogeneous, persistent returns to wealth; and taxation and capital mobility are modelled as behavioural responses. The central result is that the durable surplus is the foreign-held AI rent, a cross-border licence fee that corporate, robot, and compute or token taxes largely miss and that only a source-based levy (a digital-services-style tax or a withholding) reaches. The appropriate policy depends decisively on whether a country owns the automation or imports it: for a host that owns the rent the problem is domestic inequality, reached by progressive and wealth taxes; for a rent-importing host the problem is base erosion and a gradual transfer of capital ownership abroad, which a residence-based wealth tax cannot reach. We report conditional orderings, stress-tested with global (Sobol) sensitivity and a formal stability analysis, rather than point forecasts. ## About this publication **Preprint.** A preprint — posted publicly before or without journal peer review; findings may still be revised. Published 2026 (4 months ago) Citations Not recorded for this source Citation counts come from OpenAlex; none are recorded for this source — absence of a count is not absence of citations. [Chart: published 2026] ## More on this topic Related by theme, not necessarily by method or conclusion. - [Artificial Intelligence and Institutional Transformation across Regulatory Economic and Knowledge Systems](https://aifaultline.com/research/p/doi-10-64771-jsetms-2026-v03-i06-pp131-146/) Journal of Science Engineering Technology and Management Sciences · 2026 - [Governing the Ungovernable: Structural Contradictions, Institutional Limitations, and the Constraints of State Authority in AI Regulation in China and the United States](https://aifaultline.com/research/p/doi-10-30574-wjarr-2026-30-3-1617/) World Journal of Advanced Research and Reviews · 2026 - [Governing the Ungoverned: A Framework for Responsible AI Deployment in Nigeria’s Informal Economy](https://aifaultline.com/research/p/doi-10-59256-ijrtmr-20260603031/) International Journal Of Recent Trends In Multidisciplinary Research · 2026 - [Digitalization, AI Adoption, and MSME Productivity: An Ibn Khaldunian Perspective](https://aifaultline.com/research/p/doi-10-22373-share-0060/) Share Jurnal Ekonomi dan Keuangan Islam · 2026 Overview assembled automatically from collected metadata. [How this site is built](https://aifaultline.com/about/).