工业机器人与劳动力的空间配置

Industrial Robots and Spatial Allocation of Labor

本文使用2005—2015年人口普查数据和国际机器人联合会(IFR)工业机器人在中国各行业运行量的数据,研究工业机器人的应用对中国劳动力空间配置的影响。工具变量估计结果显示,工业机器人的应用显著减少了地区外来劳动力的迁入率,这一负向影响主要来自低技能劳动者。机制分析发现,工业机器人的应用对劳动力迁移的影响,与其应用规模和劳动力的迁移成本有关;从户籍制度改革的影响看,工业机器人广泛应用和户籍制度松绑的双重作用主要影响高技能外来劳动力的迁入。最后,在区域劳动力市场内部,工业机器人的应用对地区总就业率没有显著影响。

The report to the 19 th CPC National Congress states that China’s economy has changed from the stage of rapid growth to the stage of high-quality development,and from extensive growth that mainly depends on increasing factor input to intensive growth that mainly depends on technological progress and quality of workers.According to the International Federation of Robotics(IFR)data,China had become the largest country with industrial robots in the world by 2016.The advancements in robots raise concerns about mass unemployment.When the local labor market encounters an external demand shock,the spatial reallocation of labor can be an important channel to re-achieve the labor market equilibrium.In recent years,manufacturing sector has extensively used this new automatic production technology to replace labor.As a result,the spatial reallocation of labor has become an essential issue for China’s sustainable and high-quality development at present and in the future.However,the existing literature on the impact of industrial robots on the labor market in China mainly focuses on employment rate,wage level and employment distribution across industries in local labor market,leaving few studies on the impact of industrial robots on labor spatial allocation.Based on the 2005-2015 census data and the 2006-2015 IFR data on industrial robots operating volume in various industries,this paper examines the impact of industrial robots on labor spatial allocation.Also,we construct a Bartik variable to measure regional industrial robot application from the variation of robot application growth in different industries and the variation of industrial employment distribution in prefecture-level cities at the initial stage.To explore the causal effect of industrial robot application on labor mobility,we use the industry-level spread of robots in technology frontier countries as an instrument for the adoption of industrial robots in China.It is found that the application of industrial robots significantly reduces the labor inflow.Specifically,it reduced the share of migrants in the total local population by 1.75 percentage points from 2005 to 2015.Moreover,the negative impact of industrial robots on labor inflow is pronounced among low-skilled workers but insignificant among high-skilled workers.We also explore the underlying mechanisms and find that the effect of robot application on labor mobility depends on scale effects and individual migration costs.In the context of the accelerated reform of the hukou system,the dual effects of the widespread use of industrial robots and the reform of hukou system have significantly increased the inflow of high-skilled workers,but have no effect on inflow of low-skilled workers.In addition,we further examine the impact of robot application on local labor market and find that robot application does not have significant impact on the total local employment rate.Labor market adapts to the demand shock from industrial robot applications mainly through industrial and spatial reallocation of labor.This paper makes four main contributions.Firstly,while most of the existing studies on the impact of industrial robots focus on the internal equilibrium of the local labor market,we systematically study the impact of industrial robots on both the internal equilibrium of the local labor market and the spatial allocation of labor.Secondly,this paper focuses on the specific demand shock of industrial robots,and provides a new perspective for the determinants of labor spatial allocation in China.Thirdly,this paper investigates the skill-biased feature of technological change by studying the heterogeneous impacts of industrial robots on labor with different skill levels.Finally,this paper deeply explores the influence mechanism of industrial robot application on labor mobility.It is suggested that China should further increase the pace of hukou system reform,improve the cross-regional coordination of public services and unblock the flow of labor,in order to better adapt to the rapid development of science and technology.