Next Big Future.com:
Robots having a steam engine like effect on productivity but are NOT killing jobs overall so far
20 June 2015
Despite ubiquitous discussions of robots' potential impact, there is almost no systematic empirical evidence on their economic effects. Researchers analyzed for the first time the economic impact of industrial robots, using new data on a panel of industries in 17 countries from 1993-2007. We find that industrial robots increased both labor productivity and value added. Our panel identification is robust to numerous controls, and they found similar results instrumenting increased robot use with a measure of workers' replaceability by robots, which is based on the tasks prevalent in industries before robots were widely employed. We calculate that the increased use of robots raised countries' average growth rates by about 0.37 percentage points. We also find that robots increased both wages and total factor productivity. While robots had no significant effect on total hours worked, there is some evidence that they reduced the hours of both low-skilled and middle-skilled workers.
This article was published by Next Big Future.com on June 20, 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