The impact of robotization on productivity of manufacturing firms in Russia

Goal: the aim of the paper is to assess the impact of industrial robot imports on the productivity of Russian enterprises in the manufacturing industry. Methodology: panel regression with random effects and least squares methods are used to model the data. The sample includes 81 794 enterprises in the Russian manufacturing industry that were active during the postcrisis development of the Russian economy in 2011–2018. Findings: direct importers of industrial robots tend to be larger and more internationalized: they are owned by foreigners and export directly. In our study, we found that robot imports have a positive impact on both aggregate factor productivity and labour productivity. The results suggest that in the Russian manufacturing industry the effects of robots on productivity are more significant for non-leading enterprises, which are typically internationalized (exporters and enterprises with foreign capital) and import robots more frequently. Originality and contribution of the authors: in the Russian economy, this study represents the first attempt to assess the effects of industrial robots. Results show that industrial robots can be used to improve the competitiveness of the Russian economy and to close the productivity gap within industries. Only direct import data are used in the paper, which is a limitation.