Università della Svizzera italiana

Robots and nonparticipation in the US : where have all the workers gone?

Lerch, Benjamin

This paper analyzes the impact of one of the leading automation technologies of the last decades, industrial robots, on the declining labor force participation in the US. Exploiting exogenous variation in the adoption of robots across local labor markets and over time, I find that, on average, one additional robot drives two workers out of the labor force. Despite the adverse impact of robots,...