Robots are not always bad for employment and wages

Tiago Sequeira, Susana Garrido and Marcelo Santos
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Susana Garrido: University of Coimbra, Centre for Business and Economics,CeBER, Faculty of Economics

No 2020-16, CeBER Working Papers from Centre for Business and Economics Research (CeBER), University of Coimbra

Abstract: We reassess the impact that robotization has on wages and employment, using a database on US commuting zones from 1990 to 2007. Using an argument based on the transitional dynamics we show that the negative displacement effects of robotization can be surpassed by productivity and reallocation effects, leading to positive effects on employment after a certain level of penetration in industry. In fact, we confirm this effect through regressions that are subject to different robustness checks. Previous evidence according to which robotization always decreases employment and wages are thus not confirmed.

Keywords: Robots; Employment; Fourth Industrial Revolution; Nonlinear effects of robots (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J23 J24 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21 pages
Date: 2020-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-tid
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Robots are not always bad for employment and wages (2021)
Journal Article: Robots are not always bad for employment and wages (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gmf:papers:2020-16

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