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

Chrystalla Kapetaniou and Christoforos Antoniou Pissarides

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

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)
JEL-codes: J23 L60 O33 O52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2023-03-15
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-hme, nep-ino and nep-tid
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:121320

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