Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/322305 
Year of Publication: 
2025
Series/Report no.: 
ADB Economics Working Paper Series No. 769
Publisher: 
Asian Development Bank (ADB), Manila
Abstract: 
We examine the implications of robots and artificial intelligence (AI) for employment and productivity, using a rich firm-level database from the Survey of Business Activities provided by Statistics Korea. While previous studies have explored the effects of robots and AI separately, we investigate their effects jointly within a unified framework. We deploy propensity score matching to control for firm characteristics, enabling a potential causal interpretation of the differential impacts of robots and AI. We find that the patterns of adopting robots and AI differ significantly across industries. Additionally, although the overall share of firms adopting robots is larger, AI adoption is more concentrated among bigger firms. Our main finding is that, while adopting robots and adopting AI both increase employment, only adopting AI improves labor productivity. However, such productivity gains are accompanied by a decrease in the labor share of income, suggesting a potential shift in value distribution favoring capital income. Furthermore, we find that the immediate impact of adopting both robots and AI is an increase in temporary but not permanent employment. Finally, there is no evidence that firms adopting both robots and AI improve their labor productivity, potentially reflecting a lack of synergy.
Subjects: 
artificial intelligence
robots
employment
productivity
JEL: 
O33
O40
J21
J24
D22
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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