Harvard Business Review:
Robots seem to be improving productivity, not costing jobs
16 June 2015
Provided in a new paper from London's Center for Economic Research [sic], the analysis offered by George Graetz and Guy Michaels of Uppsala University and the London School of Economics, respectively, offers some of the first rigorous macroeconomic research and finds that industrial robots have been a substantial driver of labor productivity and economic growth. To fuel their analysis, Graetz and Michaels employ new data from the International Federation of Robotics to analyze the use of industrial robots across 14 industries in 17 countries between 1993 and 2007. What do they find? Overall, Graetz and Michaels conclude that the use of robots within manufacturing raised the annual growth of labor productivity and GDP by 0.36 and 0.37 percentage points, respectively, between 1993 and 2007. That might not seem like a lot but it represents 10 percentof total GDP growth in the countries studied and 16 percent of labor productivity growth over that time period.
This article was published online by The Harvard Business Review on June 16, 2015
Link to article here
Related publications
'Robots at Work', Georg Graetz and Guy Michaels, Centre for Economic Performance Discussion Paper No.1335, March 2015
Related links
Georg Graetz webpage
Guy Michaels webpage
Labour Markets Programme webpage