Robots and Export Quality

Robots are rapidly becoming a key part of manufacturing in developed and emerging economies. This paper examines new channel for how automation can affect international trade: quality upgrading. Automation reduce production errors, particularly repetitive processes, leading to higher products. The effects robot use on export estimated, by combining cross-country cross-industry data industrial robots with detailed Harmonized System 10-digit trade data. Robot diffusion (preexisting) foreign customers is used as an instrumental variable predict adoption the home country-industry. findings show that leads increases exported Quality improvements predominantly driven upgrading developing country exports; within countries, (initially) lower-quality exports countries. also finds some differences type robots—sophisticated or more basic—associated gains