Riccardo Cappelli

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About

Riccardo Cappelli is an economist whose research sits at the intersection of regional economics, technological change, and industrial policy. His work focuses on understanding how advanced manufacturing technologies — particularly industrial robots — diffuse across European regions, and what drives variation in their adoption. Cappelli has made a notable methodological contribution by rescaling national-level robotics data from the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) to the regional level, enabling a more granular analysis of Industry 4.0 dynamics across the five largest European economies. A central question animating his research is whether the penetration of automation technologies is better explained by country-level factors or regional characteristics — a distinction with significant implications for how policymakers should design and target industrial and innovation policy. His 2020 work helped establish the regional dimension as a meaningful lens for studying robot adoption, while his 2024 follow-up deepened this inquiry by empirically testing the relative explanatory power of regional versus national effects. Though his citation counts are still building, his contributions offer valuable frameworks for researchers and policymakers grappling with the uneven geography of technological transformation in Europe.