Productive robots and industrial employment: the role of national innovation systems

Chrystalla Kapetaniou and Christopher Pissarides

CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: In a model with robots, and automatable and non-automatable human tasks, we examine robot-labour substitutions and show how they are influenced by a country's 'innovation system'. Substitution depends on demand and production elasticities, and other factors influenced by the innovation system. Making use of World Economic Forum data we estimate the relationship for thirteen countries and find that countries with poor innovation capabilities substitute robots for workers much more than countries with richer innovation capabilities, which generally complement them. In transport equipment and non-manufacturing robots and workers are stronger substitutes than in other manufacturing.

Keywords: robots-employment substitution; automatable tasks; complementary task creation; innovation environment; industrial allocations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-03-15
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-des, nep-ino and nep-tid
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https://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1906.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Productive robots and industrial employment: the role of national innovation systems (2025)
Working Paper: Productive robots and industrial employment: the role of national innovation systems (2022)
Working Paper: Productive Robots and Industrial Employment: The Role of National Innovation Systems (2022)
Working Paper: Productive Robots and Industrial Employment: The role of national innovation systems (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp1906

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