ROBOTS AT WORK Graetz, Georg; Michaels, Guy
The review of economics and statistics,
12/2018, Letnik:
100, Številka:
5
Journal Article
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We analyze for the first time the economic contributions of modern industrial robots, which are flexible, versatile, and autonomous machines. We use novel panel data on robot adoption within ...industries in seventeen countries from 1993 to 2007 and new instrumental variables that rely on robots’ comparative advantage in specific tasks. Our findings suggest that increased robot use contributed approximately 0.36 percentage points to annual labor productivity growth, while at the same time raising total factor productivity and lowering output prices. Our estimates also suggest that robots did not significantly reduce total employment, although they did reduce low-skilled workers’ employment share.
Robots and Firms Koch, Michael; Manuylov, Ilya; Smolka, Marcel
The Economic journal (London),
08/2021, Letnik:
131, Številka:
638
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Abstract
We study the microeconomic implications of robot adoption using a rich panel data set of Spanish manufacturing firms over a 27-year period (1990–2016). We provide causal evidence on two ...central questions: (1) Which firm characteristics prompt firms to adopt robots? (2) What is the impact of robots on adopting firms relative to non-adopting firms? To address these questions, we look at our data through the lens of recent attempts in the literature to formalise the implications of robot technology. As for the first question, we establish robust evidence for positive selection, i.e., ex ante better performing firms (measured through output and labour productivity) are more likely to adopt robots. On the other hand, conditional on size, ex ante more skill-intensive firms are less likely to do so. As for the second question, we find that robot adoption generates substantial output gains in the vicinity of 20–25% within four years, reduces the labour cost share by 5–7% points, and leads to net job creation at a rate of 10%. These results are robust to controlling for non-random selection into robot adoption through a difference-in-differences approach combined with a propensity score reweighting estimator. To further validate these results, we also offer structural estimates of total factor productivity (TFP) where robot technology enters the (endogenous) productivity process of firms. The results demonstrate a positive causal effect of robots on productivity as well as a complementarity between robots and exporting in boosting productivity.
Since the mid-1990s, labor productivity growth in Europe has significantly slowed compared to earlier decades. In contrast, labor productivity growth in the United States accelerated, so that a new ...productivity gap has opened up. This paper shows that this development is attributable to the slower emergence of the knowledge economy in Europe. We consider various explanations which are not mutually exclusive. These include lower growth contributions from investment in information and communication technology; the small share of information and communications technology–producing industries in Europe; and slower multifactor productivity growth, which proxies for advances in technology and innovation. Underlying these are issues related to the functioning of European labor markets and the high level of product market regulation in Europe. The paper emphasizes the key role of market service sectors in accounting for the productivity growth divergence between the two regions. We argue that improved productivity growth in Europe's market services will be needed to avoid a further widening of the productivity gap.
This study proposes an index for measuring environmentally sensitive productivity growth which appropriately considers the nature of technical change. The rationale of this methodology is to exclude ...a spurious technical regress from the macroeconomic perspective. In order to incorporate this in developing the index, a directional distance function and the concept of the successive sequential production possibility set are combined. With this combination, the conventional Malmquist–Luenberger productivity index is modified to give the sequential Malmquist–Luenberger productivity index. This index is employed in measuring environmentally sensitive productivity growth and its decomposed components of 26 OECD countries for the period 1970–2003.We distinguish two main empirical findings. First, even though the components of the conventional Malmquist–Luenberger productivity index and the proposed index are different, the trends of rates of average productivity growth are similar. Second, unlike in previous studies, the efficiency change is the main contributor to the earlier study period, whereas the effect of technical change has prevailed over time.
► To provide an environmentally sensitive productivity growth index by considering the progressive nature of technologies. ► To find environmentally productive and efficient countries? ► To find environmentally innovative countries?
We investigate the role of sectoral labor productivity in explaining the process of structural transformation—the secular reallocation of labor across sectors—and the time path of aggregate ...productivity across countries. We measure sectoral labor productivity across countries using a model of the structural transformation. Productivity differences across countries are large in agriculture and services and smaller in manufacturing. Over time, productivity gaps have been substantially reduced in agriculture and industry but not nearly as much in services. These sectoral productivity patterns generate implications in the model that are broadly consistent with the cross-country data. We find that productivity catch-up in industry explains about 50% of the gains in aggregate productivity across countries, whereas low productivity in services and the lack of catch-up explain all the experiences of slowdown, stagnation, and decline observed across countries.
New dinoflagellate cyst (dinocyst) analyses were carried out at high resolution in core MD99-2339, retrieved from a contouritic field in the central part of the Gulf of Cadiz, for the Marine Isotope ...Stage (MIS) 3 interval, allowing for discussion of palaeohydrological changes over the last 50ky in the subtropical NE Atlantic Ocean. Some index dinocyst taxa, according to their (palaeo)ecological significance, shed light on significant sea-surface changes. Superimposed on the general decreasing pattern of dinocyst export to the seafloor over the last 50ky, paralleling the general context of decreasing aeolian dust fertilization, a complex variability in dinocyst assemblages was detected at the millennial timescale. Enhanced fluvial discharges occurred during Greenland Interstadials (GIs), especially GI 1, 8 and 12, while enhanced upwelling cell dynamics were suggested during the Last Glacial Maximum and Heinrich Stadials. Finally, during the early Holocene, and more specifically during the Sapropel 1 interval (around 7-9kaBP), we evidenced a strong decrease in dinocyst fluxes, which occurred synchronously to a strong reduction in Mediterranean Outflow Water strength and which we attributed to an advection of warm and nutrient-poor subtropical North Atlantic Central Waters. Over the last 50ky, our study thus allows for capturing and documenting the fine tuning existing between terrestrial and marine realms in North Atlantic subtropical latitudes, in response to not only the regional climate pattern but also monsoonal forcing interfering during precession-driven Northern Hemisphere insolation maxima. This mechanism, well expressed during the Holocene, is superimposed on the pervasive role of the obliquity as a first major trigger for explaining migration of dinocyst productive centres in the NE Atlantic margin to the subtropical (temperate) latitudes during glacial (interglacial) periods.
After 2004, measured growth in labor productivity and total factor productivity slowed. We find little evidence that this slowdown arises from growing mismeasurement of the gains from innovation in ...information technology-related goods and services. First, the mismeasurement of information technology hardware is significant preceding the slowdown. Because the domestic production of these products has fallen, the quantitative effect on productivity was larger in the 1995-2004 period than since then, despite mismeasurement worsening for some types of information technology. Hence, our adjustments make the slowdown in labor productivity worse. The effect on total factor productivity is more muted. Second, many of the tremendous consumer benefits from the "new" economy such as smartphones, Google searches, and Facebook are, conceptually, nonmarket: Consumers are more productive in using their nonmarket time to produce services they value. These benefits raise consumer well-being but do not imply that market sector production functions are shifting out more rapidly than measured. Moreover, estimated gains in nonmarket production are too small to compensate for the loss in overall well-being from slower market sector productivity growth. In addition to information technology, other measurement issues that we can quantify (such as increasing globalization and fracking) are also quantitatively small relative to the slowdown.
It is widely recognized that information technology was critical to the dramatic acceleration of U.S. labor productivity growth in the mid 1990s. This paper traces the evolution of productivity ...estimates to document how and when this perception emerged. Early studies concluded that information technology was relatively unimportant. Only after the massive information technology investment boom of the late 1990s did this investment and underlying productivity increases in the information technology–producing sectors come to be identified as important sources of growth. Although information technology has diminished in significance since the dot-com crash of 2000 and observed growth rates have slowed recently, we project that private sector productivity growth will average around 2.4 percent per year for the next decade, only moderately below the average of the post-1995 period.
Governments allocate financial resources to support small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) through public subsidies and grants. However, do these public investments help supported firms to ...increase their performance and growth? We answer this question by conducting a systematic review of evidence in the European Union. We review studies investigating the effects of public grants on firm performance in the European Union’s 28 member countries that were published from 2000 on. We provide a structured overview of 30 studies covering 13 countries. Our review offers information on the methodological approaches, variables and findings of the previous studies. The summarized findings show mostly the positive outcomes of the grants on firm-survival, employment, tangible/fixed assets, sales/turnover, with mixed findings for labour productivity and total factor productivity (TFP). However, we point out that there are significant differences concerning the time period of analysis (investigating short-term vs long-term outcomes), and importantly, the heterogeneity of effects concerning firm size and age, region, industry and intensity of support. Our study offers a series of recommendations for policymakers and researchers.
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