Robotisation, Employment and Industrial Growth Intertwined Across Global Value Chains

Mahdi Ghodsi, Oliver Reiter, Robert Stehrer and Roman Stöllinger

No 177, wiiw Working Papers from The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw

Abstract: The global economy is currently experiencing a new wave of technological change involving new technologies, especially in the realm of artificial intelligence and robotics, but not limited to it. One key concern in this context is the consequences of these new technologies on the labour market. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the direct and indirect effects of the rise of industrial robots and productivity via international value chains on various industrial indicators, including employment and real value added. The paper thereby adds to the existing empirical work on the relationship between technological change, employment and industrial growth by adding data on industrial robots while controlling for other technological advancements measured by total factor productivity (TFP). The results indicate that the overall impact of the installation of new robots did not statistically affect the growth of industrial employment during the period 2000–2014 significantly, while the overall impact on the real value added growth of industries in the world was positive and significant. The methodology also allows for a differentiation between the impact of robots across various industries and countries based on two different perspectives of source and destination industries across global value chains. Disclaimer This is a background paper for the UNIDO Industrial Development Report 2020. Industrializing in the digital age.

Keywords: Robotisation; digitalisation; global value chains; total factor productivity; industrial growth; employment; value added (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D57 J21 L16 O14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages including 9 Tables and 8 Figures
Date: 2020-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-big, nep-eff, nep-int, nep-knm, nep-lma and nep-tid
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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