Stop Worrying and Love the Robot: An Activity-Based Approach to Assess the Impact of Robotization on Employment Dynamics

Abstract

This work investigates the impact that changes in the exposure to robots had on Italian local employment dynamics over the period 2011-2018. A novel empirical strategy focusing on a match between occupations’ activities and robots’ applications at a high level of disaggregation makes it possible to assess the impact of robotization on the shares of workers employed as robot operators and in occupations deemed exposed to robots. In a framework consistently centered on workers’ and robots’ activities, rather than on their industries, the analysis reveals for the first time reinstatement effects among robot operators and heterogeneous results among exposed occupations.

Keywords: Robots, Employment, Activities, Tasks, Robot applications

JEL Classification: J21, J23, J24, O33