Doctoral thesis

The effects of industrial robots on U.S. local labor markets

  • 2023

PhD: Università della Svizzera italiana

English I investigate how the introduction of industrial robots is shaping the demographic composition of the US labor force and analyze the margins of adjustment of displaced workers. Exploiting exogenous variation in robot exposure across local labor markets over time, I find that the adoption of robots between 1993 and 2014 decreased employment of men and racial and ethnic minorities relatively more than for women and whites, contributing to the secular decline in the gender employment gap and widening the race/ethnicity employment gap. Almost 8 percent of the displaced workers respond by enrolling in local community colleges, 10.5 percent claim disability benefits, and 40 percent retire early. The remaining non-participants rely on the income of their household members or live off their savings. These margins differ with the socio-demographic characteristics of the individuals.
Collections
Language
  • English
Classification
Economics
Related to

“From blue to steel-collar jobs : the decline in employment gaps?” (replication package on Zenodo)

License
License undefined
Open access status
green
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://n2t.net/ark:/12658/srd1325703
Statistics

Document views: 149 File downloads:
  • 2023ECO001.pdf: 114