工业机器人应用的要素收入分配效应

The Impacts of Industrial Robots on Factor Income Distribution

本文利用我国工业部门2009~2018年的省级面板数据,考察工业机器人应用对要素收入分配的影响。研究发现,工业机器人应用显著降低劳动要素在工业增加值中的分配比例。通过分解劳动收入份额的构成要素,本文分析了工业机器人应用对要素收入分配的影响路径。研究发现,工业机器人应用具有显著的就业替代效应和较弱的工资提升作用,且并未明显提升生产效率。无论是直接影响还是路径分析,研究均支持“机器换人”政策初显成效的结论。然而,“机器换人”在我国的应用是否体现资本偏向性,是否会对劳动工资产生负向冲击从而进一步恶化要素收入分配,仍然需要更长的观察时间加以论证。

Using provincial panel data on China’s industrial sector, this paper examines the impacts of industrial robots on factor income distribution. We find that application of industrial robots significantly lowers the distributional shares of labor factor in the industrial sector in China. By decomposing components of labor’s share of income, the paper further analyzes the impacts of industrial robot on factor income distribution. The negative impacts of the technology on the changes of labor’s share of income are mainly through employment substitution effects and mildly through wage promotion effects, but not through the effects of efficiency gains.Both direct impacts and channel analyses support the short-run success of the "replacement of workers with robots" incentive policy. Whether the application of industrial robots is biased towards capital and imposes negative impacts on factor income distribution through wage channel remain to be verified in the long run.