Urban Industrial Robot Penetration and China's Manufacturing Exports:Evidence from Multidimensional Data
Robots are known as the"pearl at the top of the manufacturing crown".The robot industry is not only a representative one on the road to becoming a manufacturing powerhouse,but also a key one in promoting China's manufacturing industry to become high-end and intelligent.Existing studies have mainly explored the impact of industrial robots on China's labor market,but have not examined the impact of robot penetration on intra-firm product export behavior from the perspective of regional heterogeneity.This paper constructs an indicator of the penetration of industrial robots in cities,which has important economic implications.This indicator takes into account both the comparative advantage of cities and the impact of industrial robots.The larger indicator indicates that a city has a greater comparative advantage and is more exposed to exogenous shocks from industrial robots.Using the constructed penetration indicator of urban industrial robots,this paper studies the impact of urban industrial robot penetration on the export of products within firms by adopting the four-dimensional data of"firm-product-export market-time".It extends relevant research on China's industrial robots from the labor market to the product market.The results show that when the penetration of urban industrial robots increases,the export value of intra-firm products in the destination market tends to increase,which is driven by the channel of"price reduction and volume increase"of firms.Specifically,a 1％increase in the penetration of industrial robots in a city significantly reduces the price of firms'product exports by 0.050％.By lowering the price,the quantity of products exported by firms increases by 0.125％.As the"quantity effect"outweighs the"price effect",the final export value of products in the overseas destination market increases by 0.112％.Thus,in general,the use of industrial robots is favorable to firm export performance.Mechanism analysis shows that,on one hand,the increased penetration of industrial robots crowds out low-skilled labor from manufacturing firms,but favors the employment of high-skilled labor.As a result,the human capital of manufacturing firms rises with the outflow of low-skilled labor and the inflow of high-skilled labor.On the other hand,the growth of urban industrial robot penetration is conducive to the improvement of firm production efficiency.Finally,through human capital upgrading and production efficiency improvement,firms can achieve export growth through"price reduction and volume increase".Further analyses show that increased penetration of urban industrial robots has a more significant crowding-out effect in low-skilled industries and low-income groups.The findings of this paper illustrate that the effect of industrial robots on the reduction of product prices favors firms'use of price competition(price cuts and volume increases)to take advantage of the international market.The use of industrial robots has improved the human capital of manufacturing firms and increased their productivity.This indicates that China's current policy direction of vigorously developing artificial intelligence(AI)deserves to be affirmed,and AI can still release a lot of scientific and technological dividends.In addition,when the penetration of urban industrial robots increases,the export value of labor-intensive and low-and medium-tech industries grows relatively fast,and the export growth rate of central and western regions is faster than that of the eastern region.Therefore,in some central and western regions where labor-intensive industries are relatively concentrated,and labor productivity is relatively low,the penetration of industrial robots has a greater role in promoting local export firms.However,these regions tend to be areas where industrial robots are less used.Therefore,the industry ecosystem of AI can be further optimized to promote coordinated inter-regional development,especially in the central and western regions where the development of industrial robots is relatively low,with a large potential for development.
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