Increased robot diffusion has raised concerns for its possible negative impact on employment. Following an empirical approach in line with those applied to the US and Germany with contrasting results, this paper provides evidence about the effect of robots on employment outcomes in Italy (second European economy for robot stock) from the early 1990s up to 2016, both at the local labour market (LLM) level and at the worker level. In order to purge from demand and other confounding shocks, the identification relies on an instrumental variables strategy based on robots’ sectoral growth in other European countries. No harmful impact on total employment emerges from the LLM analysis; the estimated effect is negative when limited to manufacturing employment, but its statistical significance is weak or absent once concurrent trends relating to trade and ICT are controlled for. Results at the worker level show that incumbent workers in manufacturing were not damaged on average, with an overall positive (though not large) employment effect, driven by longer working relationships with the original firm; conditional on remaining at the original firm, the impact is also positive on wages. On the other hand, robot diffusion turns out to have contributed to reshaping the sectoral distribution of the new labour force inflows towards less robot intensive industries.

机器人扩散的增加​​已经引起人们对其就业可能产生负面影响的担忧。遵循与美国和德国所采用的经验方法相一致的经验方法，并得出相反的结果，本文提供了证据表明，从1990年代初到2016年，机器人对意大利（第二大欧洲机器人库存经济）的就业结果产生了影响。当地劳动力市场（LLM）级别和工人级别。为了清除需求和其他令人困惑的冲击，该识别方法基于工具变量策略，该策略基于其他欧洲国家机器人的部门增长。法学硕士的分析不会对总就业产生有害影响；当仅限于制造业就业时，估计的影响是负面的，但是一旦控制了与贸易和ICT相关的并发趋势，其统计意义就很弱或没有。工人水平的结果表明，与原公司的长期工作关系推动了制造业中的在职工人平均没有受到损害，总体上产生了积极的（尽管不是很大）就业效应。在保留原始公司的前提下，对工资的影响也为正。另一方面，事实证明，机器人的扩散有助于重塑向劳动力密集程度较低的行业的新劳动力流入的部门分布。在保留原始公司的前提下，对工资的影响也为正。另一方面，事实证明，机器人的扩散有助于重塑向劳动力密集程度较低的行业的新劳动力流入的部门分布。在保留原始公司的前提下，对工资的影响也为正。另一方面，事实证明，机器人的扩散有助于重塑向劳动力密集程度较低的行业的新劳动力流入的部门分布。