Research On The Impact Of Industrial Robots On Factor Income Gap

In recent years,the rapid development of industrial robots has had an important impact on economic growth,but also triggered the panic of "machines replacing people".According to the report of the International Federation of Robotics(IFR),the annual installation of industrial robots in the world increased by 11% from 2014 to 2019.As a special factor of production,robots can affect the capital and labor market,and then affect the income gap of different factor owners.But who plays a leading role in the substitution and compensation effect of robots? Scholars have not received a unified opinion.In different countries and industries,the substitution and complementarity of machines to people are very different.Today,with the acceleration of globalization,countries have actively participated in the division of labor in the global value chain(GVC),forming a close relationship between upstream and downstream industries in the world.The industry upstream degree in GVC means the distance from the industry to the final consumer.The heterogeneous demand of consumers determines that the replaceable intensity of industrial robots to labor force is different in industries with different upstream and downstream positions.Therefore,this thesis focuses on the heterogeneous effect of industrial robots on income gap in industries with different GVC positions.At present,the existing relevant literature mainly focuses on the impact of robots on the employment market structure,employment rate and income gap.However,the measurement of income gap is mainly at the level of urban-rural income gap and skill premium income gap.There is little literature on the income gap from the perspective of different factor owners,and there is no deep analysis on the influencing factors of robot substitution and complementarity effect.Based on this,this thesis will use the rate of return of labor and capital to measure the labor income gap,and analyze the heterogeneous results of the substitution and complementarity of GVC positions in different industries in the impact of industrial robots on the income gap.(1)On the theoretical model,this thesis draws lessons from the production function of Arcemoglu and Restrepo(2016;2018a)task model,and continues to deduce the relationship between the ratio of capital factor reward to labor factor reward and robot.(2)In terms of data source and processing,this thesis uses IFR database to match WIOD database and UIBE-GVC database to obtain the sample data of 20 industries in 38 countries and regions from 2006 to 2014.(3)In terms of regression analysis,this thesis makes benchmark regression,heterogeneity analysis,mechanism test,robustness test and endogenous discussion on the upstream industry,downstream industry and total sample respectively.Finally,it tests the "Matthew effect" of industrial robots on the income gap from different income gap levels.The empirical results show that:(1)The regression shows that industrial robots can significantly expand the income gap between the whole industry and different factor owners of GVC upstream industries,and have a stronger effect on the expansion of upstream industries,but have no significant effect on the income gap of downstream industries.The reason may be that most of the upstream industries are resource factor industries,which are far away from consumers and have low sensitivity to the heterogeneous needs of consumers.Robots can be widely used for homogeneous production,and the substitution effect is greater than the complementarity effect;The downstream industry is close to consumers and highly sensitive to heterogeneous demand.The production homogeneity of robots makes it difficult to replace the labor force in the downstream industry.(2)From the perspective of mechanism analysis,industrial robots have an impact on the labor market through compensation effect and competitiveness enhancement effect,so as to expand the income gap of different factor owners.Robots create new jobs through compensation effect,so as to reduce the unemployment rate and increase the income gap;Through the competitiveness enhancement effect,increase labor intensity and prolong working hours,resulting in the increase of capital remuneration and the increase of income gap.(3)Further heterogeneity discussion shows that the impact of industrial robots on income gap is significantly different in industries with different development levels,different skill levels and different income gap levels in different countries.There are still some sectors in downstream industries,which makes robots have a significant impact on the labor market,and industrial robots have a "Matthew effect" on the income gap.