Robots at work? Pitfalls of industry level data

Arbeitspapier

In a seminal paper Graetz and Michaels (2018) find that robots increase labor productivity and TFP, lower output prices and adversely aect the employment share of low-skilled labor. We show that these effects hold only, when comparing hardly-robotizing with highly-robotizing sectors and collapse, when only the latter are analyzed. Controlling for demographic workforce variables reestablishes the productivity effects, but still rejects positive wage effects and skill-biased technological change. Additionally, we find no effects, when the investigation period is extended to the most recent data (2008-2015) and document non-monotonicity in one of the instruments, which calls the respective results into question.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: EconPol Working Paper ; No. 58

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity ; Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity ; Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials ; Industry Studies: Manufacturing: General ; Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights: General
• Subject: Robots ; Productivity ; Technological Change

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Bekhtiar, Karim ; Bittschi, Benjamin ; Sellner, Richard
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich
• (where): Munich
• (when): 2021

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/233803
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET