Automation and Manufacturing Performance in a Developing Country

• Tác giả: Massimiliano Cali
• Ngôn ngữ: eng
• Ký hiệu phân loại: 910.91 Geography of and travel in areas, regions, places in general
• Thông tin xuất bản: World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021
• Bộ sưu tập: Tài liệu truy cập mở
• ID: 299433
• Chủ đề: 1. AUTOMATION; 2. EMPLOYMENT; 3. GLOBAL VALUE CHAIN; 4. PRODUCTIVITY; 5. ROBOTS

Tóm tắt

This paper provides novel evidence on the economic impact of industrial automation in a large developing economy. It combines labor force survey and manufacturing plant-level data from Indonesia over 2008-15, when the country experienced a rapid increase in imports of robots. The findings show a positive impact of robots on various measures of plants' performance and integration into global value chains. In contrast to existing evidence on advanced and emerging economies, these plant-level impacts result in an increase in manufacturing and services employment at the local level. Such employment effects are consistent with evidence of positive employment spillovers from downstream robot-adopting plants, which help extend the benefits of automation to non-adopting plants. The spillover effects may provide a rationale to incentivize manufacturing firms to adopt industrial robots. The results also suggest that the gains from automation are not equally shared: adoption of robots is associated with a reduction in the labor share in value added and an increase in skill wage premia.