Template-type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: Montobbio, Fabio
Author-Email: fabio.montobbio@unicatt.it
Author-Workplace-Name: Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, BRICK, Collegio
	 Carlo Alberto, and ICRIOS, Bocconi University
Author-Name: Staccioli, Jacopo
Author-Email: jacopo.staccioli@unicatt.it
Author-Workplace-Name: Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, and Institute of
	 Economics, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna
Author-Name: Virgillito, Maria Enrica
Author-Email: maria.virgillito@unicatt.it
Author-Workplace-Name: Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, and Institute of
	 Economics, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna
Author-Name: Vivarelli, Marco
Author-Email: vivarelli@merit.unu.edu
Author-Workplace-Name: UNU-MERIT, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, and
	 Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA)
Title: Robots and the origin of their labour-saving impact.
Abstract: This paper investigates the presence of explicit labour-saving 
	 heuristics within robotic patents. It analyses innovative actors engaged 
	 in robotic technology and their economic environment (identity, 
	 location, industry), and identifies the technological fields 
	 particularly exposed to labour-saving innovations. It exploits advanced 
	 natural language processing and probabilistic topic modelling techniques 
	 on the universe of patent applications at the USPTO between 2009 and 
	 2018, matched with ORBIS (Bureau van Dijk) firm-level dataset. The 
	 results show that labour-saving patent holders comprise not only robots 
	 producers, but also adopters. Consequently, labour-saving robotic 
	 patents appear along the entire supply chain. The paper shows that 
	 labour-saving innovations challenge manual activities (e.g. in the 
	 logistics sector), activities entailing social intelligence (e.g. in the 
	 healthcare sector) and cognitive skills (e.g. learning and predicting).
Classification-JEL: O33, J24, C38
Keywords: Robotic Patents, Labour-Saving Technology, Search Heuristics,
	 Probabilistic Topic Models
Series: UNU-MERIT Working Papers
Creation-Date: 20200210
Number: 2020-007
File-URL: https://unu-merit.nl/publications/wppdf/2020/wp2020-007.pdf
File-Format: application/pdf
File-Size: 275 Kb
Handle: RePEc:unm:unumer:2020007