Are Robots, Software, ICT and physical capital related to productivity? A panel quantile approach

Abstract

ABSTRACT We study comparable elasticities of labor productivity on Robots, ICT, Non-ICT and Software for the whole conditional distribution of labor productivity through quantile regression analysis. When considering both country-industry fixed-effects and IV approaches, we obtain an increasing elasticity of labor productivity with respect to robot density across the main deciles of the labor productivity distribution. On average, a 1% increase in robot density is associated with nearly 0.15% increase at the 1st decile with nearly 0.17% at the 9th decile of productivity, an effect that is nearly nonsignificant within manufacturing and is crucially dependent on the lower robotized sectors. The elasticity of labor productivity to non-ICT capital (about 0.4%) and software (reaching 0.23%) are shown to be higher than that towards robots. Also the elasticities towards ICT and software vary more across the productivity distribution – presenting a downward slope – than those towards robots and physical capital. This may indicate an association of ICT and software technologies with decreasing inequality and of Robots with increasing inequality.