Title: Robots and firm reshoring
Room: E22
Time: 12.30
Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of firms' adoption of robots on reshoring, differentiating between reshoring from developed or developing countries and examining whether it occurs through the substitution of foreign suppliers with domestic suppliers or by internal production. The study also analyses the effect of robotisation-induced reshoring on firms' employment. To estimate causal effects, we employ a combination of two-way fixed effects and Difference-in-Differences (DiD) estimators with staggered adoption. The findings indicate that robot adoption leads to reshoring, primarily from developed countries, driven by the substitution of foreign sourcing with internal production. This supports the paper's finding that reshoring increases firm employment. However, when reshoring is coupled with robot adoption, the positive effect on employment is reduced, as robots likely play a role in producing a portion of the reshored goods within the firm.