Ilya Manuylov

Aarhus University, Danish Agriculture and Food Council

Papers

Total Citations

444

H-Index

About

Ilya Manuylov is an economist whose research sits at the intersection of automation, firm behavior, and labor economics. He is best known for his work examining how robotic technologies reshape the microeconomic landscape of manufacturing firms, with a particular focus on understanding which firm characteristics drive robot adoption and the downstream consequences for employment, productivity, and economic structure. His most influential contribution, "Robots and Firms" (2021), has garnered over 400 citations and stands as a landmark empirical study in the automation literature. Leveraging a rich panel dataset of Spanish manufacturing firms spanning 27 years (1990–2016), the work provides rigorous causal evidence on robot adoption decisions and their firm-level implications — a methodological achievement that has made it a foundational reference for researchers studying technological change. Building on this foundation, Manuylov's 2023 study on the technological bias of robot adoption advances the field further by applying multidimensional productivity estimation techniques to disentangle Hicks-neutral from factor-augmenting technological change, shedding light on how automation affects the aggregate labor share. Together, his contributions offer some of the most carefully identified empirical insights available on how the rise of industrial robots is transforming modern firms and labor markets.