Abstract

We analyze the relationship between intelligent manufacturing and export sophistication from the perspective of industrial robots. We use industrial robot panel data from International Federation of Robotics in 70 countries from 1995 to 2016. Our empirical research shows that if a country increases 1% of industrial robots in production process, export sophistication will increase 0.0036%. The result is very robust when we use two kind of proxy variables. And we also find that financial crisis depresses the effect of industrial robots on export sophistication. Our estimates suggest that intelligent manufacturing is a way to realize export upgrading in the background of a new industrial revolution. Countries without producing any industrial robots can import some robots from other countries to increase export sophistication.

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