The impact of robot adoption on firm’s OFDI: Evidence from China

Shuzhong Ma, Peng Wu and Chao Fang

Journal of Asian Economics, 2025, vol. 97, issue C

Abstract: Increased robot adoption is expected to affect existing global production organizations and prompt reshoring. We analyze the impact of robot adoption on Chinese firms’ outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) to ascertain trends in industry migration. Robust difference-in-differences (DID) estimates from the three datasets show a positive effect of robot adoption on the different motives for OFDI. This impact was driven by production expansion, with robot adoption raising firms’ demand for factors, increasing productivity, and expanding exports. This positive effect is stronger for knowledge-seeking and export-seeking OFDI, particularly for upstream firms. These findings suggest that reshoring may not occur, as predicted in the literature.

Keywords: Robot adoption; OFDI; Reshoring; Production expansion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1049007825000259
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:asieco:v:97:y:2025:i:c:s1049007825000259

DOI: 10.1016/j.asieco.2025.101901

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Asian Economics is currently edited by C. Wiemer

More articles in Journal of Asian Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().