APL (Ajiken Power Lunch)

Thursday, the 14th of May, 11:00 a.m. to 12:15 p.m.

IDE-JETRO C23 Meeting Room

Industrial robots are typically viewed as technology for labor-scarce advanced economies, and their relevance for developing countries is often questioned. Departing from this perspective, this paper examines the effect of robot adoption on export structure in 33 developing economies across 15 manufacturing sectors between 2005 and 2020. The empirical analysis combines industry-level bilateral trade flows from OECD input-output tables with data on robot adoption from the International Federation of Robotics. To address endogeneity, the study employs PPML estimation with an instrumental variables strategy based on global industry-specific automation trends in comparable countries. Our findings show that a 1 percent increase in robot density leads to a 0.39 percent rise in intermediate goods exports, facilitating integration into global production networks. Furthermore, the results demonstrate a structural shift in export patterns: automation increases exports of both intermediate and final goods in South–South trade, whereas in exports to advanced economies gains are limited to intermediate inputs. The findings are robust to alternative specifications and to accounting for the role of China, which accounts for a large share of automation among developing economies.

Dr Nurillaev Karamat Maratovich (Hokkaido University)

Kiyoyasu Tanaka