机器人是否正在转移外国直接投资？

Policy Research Working Paper Are Robots Shifting Foreign Direct Investments? Francesca de NicolaShawn W. TanAaron Tang A verified reproducibility package for this paper isavailable athttp://reproducibility.worldbank.org,clickherefor direct access. Policy Research Working Paper11362 Abstract direct investments is decomposed into three components:capital per job (or capital intensity), jobs created per project(or labor intensity), and number of foreign direct invest-ments projects. The positive effect of robotization in thesource country on foreign direct investments is driven byincreases in the number of projects and capital intensity,but not labor intensity. Decomposing foreign direct invest- Industrial robots are rapidly changing global productionprocesses, with large implications for patterns of foreigndirect investments. The impact is ambiguous a priori. Onthe one hand, robotization may boost foreign direct invest-ments since firms that have invested in robots increase theirdemand for complementary inputs. On the other hand,robotization may dampen foreign direct investments sincefirms have weaker incentives to outsource selected inputs This paper is a product of the Trade, Competition, and Business Global Department and the International FinanceCorporation. It is part of a larger effort by the World Bank Group to provide open access to its research and make acontribution to development policy discussions around the world. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on theWeb at http://www.worldbank.org/prwp. The authors may be contacted at fdenicola@worldbank.org and swtan@ifc.org. A The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about developmentissues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry thenames of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those Are Robots Shifting Foreign Direct Investments? Francesca de NicolaShawn W. Tan 1Introduction Industrial robots are rapidly transforming global production processes, with profound implicationsfor patterns of foreign direct investment (FDI). Over the past decade, the annual installations of in-dustrial robots have more than doubled worldwide (International Federation of Robotics (IFR), The theoretical prediction is ambiguous.On the one hand, robotization may boost outwardFDI as firms that invest in automation become more productive and competitive, increasing theirdemand for complementary inputs and expanding into foreign markets.This argument hinges onthe theoretical framework by Acemoglu and Restrepo (2020), and the empirical evidence by Artucet al. (2023), Wang (2021), and Stapleton and Webb (2020).The channel operates through both To resolve this empirical ambiguity, we examine how robotization in source and destinationcountries affects bilateral FDI flows. We combine granular data from fDi Markets covering greenfieldinvestments from 2003 to 2021 across 65 countries with industry-level robot stock data from the Our central finding is that robotization at home significantly boosts outward FDI. A 1% increasein robot adoption in a source country’s industry is associated with up to 0.8% increase in FDI To uncover the mechanisms driving this relationship, we decompose the aggregate FDI effect intothree components following standard methodologies in the trade literature (Hillberry and Hummels, 2008): (1)capital intensity, measured as capital per job created, (2)labor intensity, measured as jobscreated per project, and (3) thenumber of FDI projects, the extensive margin. This decompositionreveals that the positive effect of source country robotization operates through two channels:an Our findings contribute to three strands of literature.First, we extend research on the labormarket impacts of automation (Acemoglu and Restrepo, 2020) by showing that robotization hassignificant cross-border spillovers through FDI channels. Second, we add to the extensive literatureon the determinants of FDI, by identifying technological adoption as a key driver of investment The policy implications are significant for both advanced and developing economies. For sourcecountries, our results suggest that investing in automation enhances firms’ international competi-tiveness and facilitates their integration into global production networks. For destination countries,particularly in the developing world, the lack of a significant relationship between host country The remainder of the paper proceeds as follows. Sections 2 and 3 describe our data sources andempirical methodology, respectively, including our instrumental variable strategy. Section 4 presentsour main results on the relationship between robotization and FDI. Subsection 4.2 decomposes theaggregate effects into capital intensity, labor intensity