Events

Dr. Anders Humlum
Assistant Professor of Economics
Booth School of Business
University of Chicago

I study the distributional impact of industrial robots using administrative data that link workers, firms, and robots in Denmark. I estimate a dynamic model of how firms select into and reorganize production around robot adoption. I find that firms expand output, lay off production workers, and hire tech workers when they adopt robots. I embed the firm model into a general equilibrium framework that endogenizes the dynamic choice for workers to switch occupations in response to robots. To this end, I develop a fixed-point algorithm for solving the general equilibrium that features two-sided (firm and worker) heterogeneity and dynamics. I estimate that robots have increased average real wages by 0.8 percent but have lowered the real wages of production workers by 5.4 percent. Welfare losses from robots are concentrated on old production workers, as younger workers benefit from the option value of switching into tech.

This is a joint seminar organized by HKU, CUHK, City U, HKUST and Lingnan U.

Please contact Xiameng PAN at xmpan@connect.hku.hk for registration.