Reassessing EU Comparative Advantage: The Role of Technology
Filippo di Mauro, Marco Matani, Gianmarco Ottaviano
International Economics,
Vol. 183,
2025
Abstract
Based on a sufficient statistics approach, we show how the state of technology of European industries relative to the rest of the world can be empirically assessed in a way that is simple in terms of computation, parsimonious in terms of data requirements, but still comprehensive in terms of information. The lack of systematic cross-industry correlation between export specialization and technological advantage suggests that standard measures of revealed comparative advantage only imperfectly capture a country’s technological prowess due to the concurrent influences of factor prices, market size, markups, firm selection and market share reallocation. These findings offer policy insights relevant to the EU’s external competitiveness debate, echoing several recommendations from the Draghi report. Achieving export specialization in key sectors requires more than just technological superiority.
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Robot Hubs and the Use of Robotics in US Manufacturing Establishments
Erik Brynjolfsson, Catherine Buffington, Nathan Goldschlag, J. Frank Li, Javier Miranda, Robert Seamans
American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings,
Vol. 115 (May),
2025
Abstract
We use data from the Annual Survey of Manufactures to study the characteristics and geographic distribution of investments in robots across US manufacturing establishments. Robotics adoption and robot intensity (the number of robots per employee) cluster in "robot hubs." Establishments that report having robotics are larger and have a larger production worker share, lower pay per worker, lower labor share, and higher capital expenditures, including higher IT capital expenditures. Notably, establishments are more likely to have robots if other establishments in the same core-based statistical area and industry also report having robotics, suggestive of agglomeration and peer effects.
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