对外贸易与制造业机器人使用:行业开放促进技术进步的新证据

本文基于国际机器人联盟提供的制造业分行业机器人数据,以2009年六部委联合出台的汽车出口促进政策作为“准自然实验”,利用双重差分法评估了行业对外贸易对机器人使用规模的影响。研究表明:在汽车出口促进政策实施以后,汽车生产行业及与汽车生产关系紧密的行业,机器人存量和增量规模相比其他行业有更大幅度提高,证明行业对外贸易水平提高,会显著增加机器人使用规模,并且无论出口还是进口水平提高,都会同样促进机器人存量和增量增长。结论通过了一系列稳健性检验。本文进一步的研究还发现,行业开放提高机器人使用规模,依靠用工替代和研发鼓励两条路径实现。本研究为行业开放促进技术进步提供了新的理论和证据,也为国家制定人工智能发展计划提出了有益建议。

International Trade and Manufacturing Robots: New Evidence that Industry Openness Promotes Technological Progress

Based on the robot data provided by the International Robot Federation, this paper takes automobile export promotion policy jointly issued by 6 ministries of China as a quasi-natural experiment and uses difference-in-difference to assess the effect of industrial international trade on the scale of robot application. It shows that after the implementation of the automobile export promotion policy, the inventory and incremental scale of robots in the automobile production industry and closely related industries have increased significantly compared with other industries. And it proves that the improvement of international trade of the industry will significantly increase the scale of robot application through labor substitution and R&D incentive, and the increase of either export or import will promote the increase of robot inventory and increment. The conclusion passes a series of robustness tests. The research provides new theoretical evidence that industry openness promotes technological progress, and also puts forward beneficial suggestions for national plans of artificial intelligence development.