 Does artificial intelligence affect the pattern of skill demand? Evidence from Chinese manufacturing firmsMengmeng Xie, Lin Ding, Yan Xia, Jianfeng Guo, Jiaofeng Pan and Huijuan Wang Economic Modelling, 2021, vol. 96, issue C, 295-309 Abstract: In view of the recent penetration of artificial intelligence (AI) into production activities, we undertake a quasi-natural experiment to identify its impact on employment at different skill levels using micro-enterprise data from Chinese manufacturing during 2011–2017. Employing a robust difference-in-differences method with propensity score matching, we investigate the heterogeneous impact of AI adoption upon different skills across three dimensions — geographical regions, enterprise types, and the length of time since the adoption of AI. We find that AI reduces the relative demand for low-skilled labor across all regions in China, while increasing the relative demand for high-skilled labor only in the eastern region. These differential impacts of AI upon relative demand for different skills reflect firm-level technological intensity. Results also show that the longer the duration of AI use, the greater is the impact upon the relative demand for high-skilled labor. Keywords: Artificial intelligence; Skill demand; Heterogeneity analysis; Robust DID; China Manufacturing (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:96:y:2021:i:c:p:295-309 DOI: 10.1016/j.econmod.2021.01.009 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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