Robotization and labour dislocation in the manufacturing sectors of OECD countries: a panel VAR approach

Fabiano Compagnucci, Andrea Gentili, Enzo Valentini and Mauro Gallegati

Applied Economics, 2019, vol. 51, issue 57, 6127-6138

Abstract: Robots are the most important innovation which has affected the production process in the last three decades. Thanks to the latest advances in technology, they have been able to perform an ever-increasing number of tasks, eventually replacing human work within the whole production process. However, because of the scarcity of suitable data, the extent of this potentially disrupting process is not fully assessed. This paper makes up for the lack of empirical evidence on the effect of robotization on labour dislocation using data collected by the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) on the number of robots installed in the different manufacturing industries of 16 OECD countries over the period 2011–2016. We show that at the industry level a 1% growth in the number of robots reduces the growth rate of worked hours by 0.16, as well as the selling prices and the real values of the compensations of employees. Moreover, we show that a given sector is more likely to be robotized when it is expanding both in terms of relative prices and employee compensations. We conclude that, at least in the selected countries, the introduction of robots plays a key role in slowing down human labour and compensation growth.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2019.1659499 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:applec:v:51:y:2019:i:57:p:6127-6138

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEC20

DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2019.1659499

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().