Competing with Robots: Firm-Level Evidence from France

27 Pages Posted: 27 Jul 2020 Last revised: 16 Aug 2020

See all articles by Daron Acemoglu

Daron Acemoglu

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Department of Economics; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Claire Lelarge

University of Paris-Saclay; Banque de France - Economic Study and Research Division; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

Pascual Restrepo

Boston University - Department of Economics

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: June 2020

Abstract

Using several sources, we construct a data set of robot purchases by French manufacturing firms and study the firm-level implications of robot adoption. Out of 55,390 firms in our sample, 598 have adopted robots between 2010 and 2015, but these firms account for 20% of manufacturing employment and value added. Consistent with theory, robot adopters experience significant declines in labor share and the share of production workers in employment, and increases in value added and productivity. They expand their overall employment as well. However, this expansion comes at the expense of their competitors (as automation reduces their relative costs). We show that the overall impact of robot adoption on industry employment is negative. We further document that the impact of robots on overall labor share is greater than their firm-level effects because robot adopters are larger and grow faster than their competitors.

Keywords: automation, Competition, Labor Share, Manufacturing, productivity, reallocation, robots, Tasks

JEL Classification: J23, J24, L11

Suggested Citation

Acemoglu, Daron and Lelarge, Claire and Lelarge, Claire and Restrepo, Pascual, Competing with Robots: Firm-Level Evidence from France (June 2020). CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP14971, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3650084

Daron Acemoglu (Contact Author)

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Department of Economics ( email )

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Claire Lelarge

University of Paris-Saclay ( email )

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Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) ( email )

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Pascual Restrepo

Boston University - Department of Economics ( email )

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