The effect of industrial robots’ adoption on urban income inequality in China

Abstract

This paper empirically investigates the effect of the utilization of industrial robots on income inequality in urban China. By employing the data of imports of industrial robots and income inequality at the city level in China, we find that the adoption of robots has a positive effect on urban income inequality. This positive effect remains robust when we use instrumental variable estimation to tackle the potential endogeneity problem. In addition, this positive effect is more salient in cities with below average national income per capita. The results have important policy implications for achieving common prosperity in China.