The Unassuming Economist

From a new Vox piece on robots and firms:

“Frey and Osborne (2017) predict that almost 47% of total US employment could be automated in the nearest future. Focusing on the period from 1993 to 2007 and covering 17 different countries, Graetz and Michaels (2018) find that the growing intensity of robot use accounted for 15% of aggregate economy-wide productivity growth, contributed to significant growth in wages, and had virtually no aggregate employment effects. At the same time, Acemoglu and Restrepo (2017) investigate the US labour market between 1990 and 2007 and show that one additional robot per thousand workers reduces the employment to population ratio by about 0.2 percentage points and wages by 0.37 percent within commuting zones. Dauth et al. (2018) study Germany between 1994 and 2014 and find no effects on total employment, but identify a substantial shift in the composition of jobs away from manufacturing and towards business service”