UCLA paper: productivity tech like AI can trigger a workplace "rat race" that hurts welfare
soumitrashukla9 · x · 2026-10-15
A new paper by Auyon Siddiq (UCLA Anderson), "The Rat Race at Work: Technology and Burnout" (Oct 2026), models how productivity-enhancing technology like AI affects employees.
- Employee productivity rises with both technology quality and chosen work intensity; high intensity accelerates burnout, which ends production and costs the firm.
- When pay is sufficiently sensitive to relative performance, better technology triggers a competitive "rat race"—employee welfare can initially fall before recovering as competition cools.
- For firms, burnout risk yields decreasing marginal returns to technology; reducing the underlying burnout hazard can paradoxically raise actual burnout in equilibrium.
- When tech quality is low, profit-maximizing firms may over-invest in burnout mitigation vs. the social optimum, which prefers weaker performance incentives.
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