Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/155768 
Year of Publication: 
2017
Series/Report no.: 
Hohenheim Discussion Papers in Business, Economics and Social Sciences No. 05-2017
Publisher: 
Universität Hohenheim, Fakultät Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften, Stuttgart
Abstract: 
We analyze the effects of declining population growth on the adoption of automation technology. A standard theoretical framework of the accumulation of traditional physical capital and of automation capital predicts that countries with a lower population growth rate are the ones that innovate and/or adopt new automation technologies faster. We test the theoretical prediction by means of panel data for 60 countries over the time span from 1993 to 2013. Regression estimates provide empirical support for the theoretical prediction and suggest that a 1% increase in population growth is associated with approximately a 2% reduction in the growth rate of robot density. Our results are robust to the inclusion of standard control variables, the use of different estimation methods, the consideration of a dynamic framework with the lagged dependent variable as regressor, and changing the measurement of the stock of robots.
Subjects: 
Automation
Industrial Robots
Demographic Change
Declining Population Growth
Economic Growth
JEL: 
J11
O14
O33
O40
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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