Browsing by Subject "Robots"

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Automation, robots and wage inequality in Germany
a decomposition analysis
(2020) Schmid, Ramona; Brall, Franziska
We analyze how and through which channels wage inequality is affected by the rise in automation and robotization in the manufacturing sector in Germany from 1996 to 2017. Combining rich linked employer-employee data accounting for a variety of different individual, firm and industry characteristics with data on industrial robots and automation probabilities of occupations, we are able to disentangle different potential causes behind changes in wage inequality in Germany. We apply the recentered influence function (RIF) regression based Oaxaca-Blinder (OB) decomposition on several inequality indices and find evidence that besides personal characteristics like age and education the rise in automation and robotization contributes significantly to wage inequality in Germany. Structural shifts in the workforce composition towards occupations with lower or medium automation threat lead to higher wage inequality, which is observable over the whole considered time period. The effect of automation on the wage structure results in higher inequality in the 1990s and 2000s, while it has a significant decreasing inequality effect for the upper part of the wage distribution in the more recent time period.
On the possibility of automation-induced stagnation
(2017) Gasteiger, Emanuel; Prettner, Klaus
We analyze the long-run growth effects of automation in the standard overlapping generations framework. We show that, in contrast to other neoclassical models of capital accumulation, automation does not promote growth but induces economic stagnation. The reason is that automation suppresses wages, which are the only source of investment in the overlapping generations framework.
The implications of automation for economic growth and the labor share
(2016) Prettner, Klaus
We introduce automation into a standard model of capital accumulation and show that (i) there is the possibility of perpetual growth, even in the absence of technological progress; (ii) the long-run economic growth rate declines with population growth, which is consistent with the available empirical evidence; (iii)there is a unique share of savings diverted to automation that maximizes long-run growth; (iv) the labor share declines with automation to an extent that fits to the observed pattern over the last decades.