Competing with Robots: Firm-Level Evidence from France

Claire Lelarge, Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo

No 14971, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: Using several sources, we construct a data set of robot purchases by French manufacturing firms and study the firm-level implications of robot adoption. Out of 55,390 firms in our sample, 598 have adopted robots between 2010 and 2015, but these firms account for 20% of manufacturing employment and value added. Consistent with theory, robot adopters experience significant declines in labor share and the share of production workers in employment, and increases in value added and productivity. They expand their overall employment as well. However, this expansion comes at the expense of their competitors (as automation reduces their relative costs). We show that the overall impact of robot adoption on industry employment is negative. We further document that the impact of robots on overall labor share is greater than their firm-level effects because robot adopters are larger and grow faster than their competitors.

Keywords: Automation; Competition; Labor share; Manufacturing; Productivity; Reallocation; robots; Tasks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J23 J24 L11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-tid
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (157)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Competing with Robots: Firm-Level Evidence from France (2020)
Working Paper: Competing with Robots: Firm-Level Evidence from France (2020)
Working Paper: Competing with Robots: Firm-Level Evidence from France (2020)
Working Paper: Competing with Robots: Firm-Level Evidence from France (2020)
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