Robots and Wages: A Meta-Analysis

Abstract

Given the mixed empirical evidence our meta-study aims to uncover a potentially true effect of industrial robots on wages and to identify drivers of the heterogeneous results. We collected 53 papers containing 2143 estimations by means of a systematic literature research. The overall effect of industrial robots on wages is close to zero but statistically insignificant. We observe limited evidence for a negative publication bias and some evidence for data dependence when considering IV estimations only. Our results suggest that the heterogeneity among primary estimations is driven by selection of countries and controls, aggregation level, functional form, and publication status.