A paper co-authored by Professor Xiao Ting (first author), Chen Zhouyong (corresponding author, a PhD student supervised by Professor Xiao), and Professor He Xiaogang has been officially published in Management World (Issue 11, 2025).
The
study, titled "The Employment Effect of Industrial Robot Price
Changes—Empirical Evidence Based on Macro and Micro Perspectives,"
examines how industrial robot price changes affected employment in
China from 2015 to 2023. Drawing on standard factor demand theory and
a task-based framework, the authors construct a panel dataset at the
firm-province-year level. They estimate robot prices using a
trade-weighting method and employ rigorous econometric techniques to
establish causality. The findings indicate:
(1) A decline in
industrial robot prices significantly boosts firm-level employment; a
1% price decrease leads to an approximately 0.008% increase in
employment.
(2) The primary mechanism is that lower robot prices
reduce production costs, enabling firms to lower output prices, gain
market share, and expand production, thereby increasing labor
demand.
(3) The employment-promoting effect is more pronounced
in coastal regions and low-tech industries. While falling prices
reduce production-line jobs, they increase technical and sales
positions and benefit highly-educated workers.
(4) Macro-level
analysis confirms that robot price declines raise provincial
employment rates, finding no net job reduction from "machines
replacing humans."
This research provides new empirical evidence on the structural impact of automation and offers valuable insights for policymakers.
[Extended Reading]
Management World is a premier academic journal sponsored by the Development Research Center of the State Council. It is widely recognized as one of China's most authoritative journals, holding an 'A+' rating, and is a top-tier journal designated by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the National Social Science Fund. It consistently ranks first among management studies journals in major Chinese evaluation systems.