The rise of robots has been attracted a lot of attention in recent years because of robots’ capacity to boost productivity and to replace and relocate labor, both aspects being at the heart of MICROPROD’s research agenda.
So far, studies mostly had to rely on rather aggregated industry level data. This made it difficult to really understand what’s going on at the firm level, e.g. in terms of competition, within industry spillovers, and labor relocation. Germany is among the world leaders in robot use. Using a newly collected dataset with plant-level information of robot use from 2014 to 2018, this paper provides the first microscopic portrait of robotisation in Germany and studies the potential determinants of robot adoption. In doing so, it for instance shows the immense heterogeneity in robot use even within sectors in and the high concentration of sector-level robot use in very few user firms.
To learn more about IWH robot research agenda, have a look at their most recent Discussion Papers!
