 Robot adoption and export performance: Firm-level evidence from SpainMaite Alguacil, Alessia Lo Turco and Inmaculada Martínez-Zarzoso Economic Modelling, 2022, vol. 114, issue C Abstract: Export activities are crucial for firm performance. Existing evidence shows that technology adoption is an essential determinant of firm competitiveness. Nevertheless, scarce attention has been devoted to robotisation, a new technology that firms increasingly adopt. We investigate the effect of robot adoption on the intensive and extensive margins of exports of Spanish manufacturing firms over the period 1990–2014. We combine the propensity score matching (PSM) and difference in differences (DID) techniques and find that firms adopting robots experience a sharp increase in their export probability, export sales and share of exports in total output. This result persists after a wide array of robustness checks, including the use of instrumental variables. Robot adoption favours export entry and survival and fosters the export activity of intermediate goods’ producers. The positive impact of robot adoption on exports is driven by its positive effect on firm total factor productivity, product innovation and importing. Keywords: Robots; Firm; Exports; Imports; Intensive margin; Extensive margin; PSM; DID (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecmode:v:114:y:2022:i:c:s0264999322001584 DOI: 10.1016/j.econmod.2022.105912 Access Statistics for this article Economic Modelling is currently edited by S. Hall and P. Pauly More articles in Economic Modelling from Elsevier |
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