Evidence on the Adoption of Artificial Intelligence: The Role of Skills Shortage

Paolo Carioli, Dirk Czarnitzki and Gastón P Fernández Barros

No 735893, Working Papers of ECOOM - Centre for Research and Development Monitoring from KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), ECOOM - Centre for Research and Development Monitoring

Abstract: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is considered to be the next general-purpose technology, with the potential of performing tasks commonly requiring human capabilities. While it is commonly feared that AI replaces labor and disrupts jobs, we instead investigate the potential of AI for overcoming increasingly alarming skills shortages in firms. We exploit unique German survey data from the Mannheim Innovation Panel on both the adoption of AI and the extent to which firms experience scarcity of skills. We measure skills shortage by the number of job vacancies that could not be filled as planned by firms, distinguishing among different types of skills. To account for the potential endogeneity of skills shortage, we also implement instrumental variable estimators. Overall, we find a positive and significant effect of skills shortage on AI adoption, the breadth of AI methods, and the breadth of areas of application of AI. In addition, we find evidence that scarcity of labor with academic education relates to firms exploring and adopting AI.

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; CIS data; skills shortage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33
Date: 2024-02-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ain, nep-ino and nep-sbm
Note: paper number MSI_2402
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Published in FEB Research Report MSI_2402, pages 1-33

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Related works:
Working Paper: Evidence on the Adoption of Artificial Intelligence: The Role of Skills Shortage (2024)
Working Paper: Evidence on the Adoption of Artificial Intelligence: The Role of Skills Shortage (2024)
Working Paper: Evidence on the adoption of Artificial Intelligence: The role of skills shortage (2024)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ete:ecoomp:735893

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