Future Impacts of Industry 4.0 on Labour Markets and Production Reshoring, Concentration and Sustainability: A Prospective Literature Review.

This paper presents a semi-systematic review of the forward-looking literature that investigates the socio-economic consequences of Industry 4.0 innovations. We select three relevant technologies (Internet of Things, Additive Manufacturing, Generative AI) and four socio-economic challenges (green transition, labour transformation, production reshoring and concentration). Based on several contributions drawn both from social and engineering sciences, we present descriptive frameworks that outline future scenarios of the I4.0 transition, particularly singling out the mechanisms whereby this technological revolution can affect relevant socio-economic transformations, proposing an agenda for future empirical research.