Irene Brambilla, Andrés César, Guillermo Falcone, Leonardo Gasparini
*The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of IDRC or its Board of Governors. This work was carried out with the aid of a grant from the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada.
This publication studies the effects of robot penetration on labor markets for the three largest economies in Latin America: Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, during the period 2004-2016.
It explores the significant variability in robot exposure across districts and across time to estimate its impacts on several relevant outcomes. We find that districts more exposed to robotics adoption had a worse performance relative to less exposed ones in terms of unemployment, informality, earnings, inequality, and poverty. Our results also support the idea that the unemployment costs generated by the new technologies are relatively concentrated in the middle of the skill distribution. Finally, we also show that these costs were more intense for men relative to women.
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