
Robots and Firms - quickfox
https://voxeu.org/article/robots-and-firms
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beisner
This seems to be a fairly obvious finding, doesn’t it? Any change in business
practices that gives you a competitive advantage gives you, well, a
competitive advantage!

The study seems to say: if your company automates jobs away, you’ll actually
create jobs in the long run because you’ll be able to take over competitors’
market share! But I don’t think those jobs are of the same type as the ones
eliminated - probably trading manual labor for strategy/marketing/engineering,
which is not much consolation to current manual workers at your firm.

Also, the study neglects to mention industry-wide effects. Maybe one tech-
savvy company can grow its headcount even after automating a bunch of jobs
away, but given the heavy headcount losses sustained by competitors, will it
still be a net increase in the industry? I would suspect not.

