Robots and the Origin of Their Labour-Saving Impact

34 Pages Posted: 24 Feb 2020 Last revised: 19 May 2022

See all articles by Fabio Montobbio

Fabio Montobbio

iCRIOS - Bocconi University; Catholic University of Milan - Department of Economic Policy

Jacopo Staccioli

Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna di Pisa

Maria Virgillito

Catholic University of Milan

Marco Vivarelli

Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano; IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Abstract

This paper investigates the presence of explicit labour-saving heuristics within robotic patents. It analyses innovative actors engaged in robotic technology and their economic environment (identity, location, industry), and identifies the technological fields particularly exposed to labour-saving innovations. It exploits advanced natural language processing and probabilistic topic modelling techniques on the universe of patent applications at the USPTO between 2009 and 2018, matched with ORBIS (Bureau van Dijk) firm-level dataset. The results show that labour-saving patent holders comprise not only robots producers, but also adopters. Consequently, labour-saving robotic patents appear along the entire supply chain. The paper shows that labour-saving innovations challenge manual activities (e.g. in the logistics sector), activities entailing social intelligence (e.g. in the healthcare sector) and cognitive skills (e.g. learning and predicting).

Keywords: search heuristics, labour-saving technology, robotic patents, probabilistic topic models

JEL Classification: O33, J24, C38

Suggested Citation

Montobbio, Fabio and Montobbio, Fabio and Staccioli, Jacopo and Virgillito, Maria and Vivarelli, Marco, Robots and the Origin of Their Labour-Saving Impact. IZA Discussion Paper No. 12967, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3542636

Fabio Montobbio (Contact Author)

iCRIOS - Bocconi University ( email )

Via Roentgen 1
20136 Milan, MI 20136
Italy

HOME PAGE: http://https://sites.google.com/site/montobbiofabio/

Catholic University of Milan - Department of Economic Policy ( email )

Largo Gemelli 1
Milan, MI Milano 20123
Italy

HOME PAGE: http://https://sites.google.com/site/montobbiofabio/

Jacopo Staccioli

Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna di Pisa ( email )

Biblioteca Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna
Piazza Martiri della Liberta, n. 33
Pisa, 56127
Italy

Maria Virgillito

Catholic University of Milan ( email )

Largo Gemelli 1
Milan, 20123
Italy

Marco Vivarelli

Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano ( email )

Largo Gemelli 1
Milano, 20123
Italy

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

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