Working Paper: NBER ID: w26738
Authors: Daron Acemoglu; Claire Lelarge; Pascual Restrepo
Abstract: Using several sources, we construct a data set of robot purchases by French manufacturing firms and study the firm-level implications of robot adoption. Out of 55,390 firms in our sample, 598 have adopted robots between 2010 and 2015, but these firms account for 20% of manufacturing employment and value added. Consistent with theory, robot adopters experience significant declines in labor share and the share of production workers in employment, and increases in value added and productivity. They expand their overall employment as well. However, this expansion comes at the expense of their competitors (as automation reduces their relative costs). We show that the overall impact of robot adoption on industry employment is negative. We further document that the impact of robots on overall labor share is greater than their firm-level effects because robot adopters are larger and grow faster than their competitors.
Keywords: robot adoption; firm-level outcomes; labor share; productivity; employment
JEL Codes: J23; J24; L11
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| robot adoption (L63) | decline in labor share (E25) |
| robot adoption (L63) | decrease in the share of production workers in employment (J29) |
| robot adoption (L63) | increase in productivity (O49) |
| robot adoption (L63) | increase in value added (O49) |
| robot adoption (L63) | overall increase in employment in robot-adopting firms (J23) |
| 20 percentage point increase in robot adoption (O14) | 32% decline in industry employment (L69) |
| decline in labor share in French manufacturing (E25) | lower covariance between firm-level value added and labor share (F16) |
| competitors' robot adoption (L63) | significant declines in value added and employment (F66) |
| robot adoption (L63) | negative overall market-level implications (G41) |