Levent Şahin

Department of Economics, Çankırı Karatekin University,

Çankırı, Turkey

sahinlvnt@gmail.com

ORCID 0000-0001-7042-7964

Impacts of industrial robot usage on international labor markets and productivity: Evidences from 22 OECD countries

Abstract. This paper examines the impact of the number of industrial robots on employment, minimum wage, and productivity by using the panel pooled mean group estimator method in the context of the Creative Destruction hypothesis of Schumpeter and the Technological System of Freeman with Dosi both in the long and short term for 22 OECD countries (Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Korea, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the UK, and the US). The study covers the period of 2006-2017. This article is one of the few empirical studies on industrial robots. According to the panel cointegration analysis results, it is concluded that the number of industrial robots has a positive long-term impact on employment and productivity. Meaningless result has been found in relation to the impact on minimum wage.

Received: November, 2019

1st Revision: June, 2020

Accepted: August, 2020

DOI: 10.14254/2071-8330.2020/13-3/4

JEL Classification: F20, F41, F66

Keywords: industrial robots, employment, minimum wage, OECD countries