科学研究

Lixin Tang is an associate professor with tenure at the Institute for Economic and Social Research at Jinan University. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Maryland in 2015. His research interests include international trade and developmental economics. His work has been published in leading journals including Journal of International Economics, Journal of Development Economics, Review of Economic Dynamics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, and Journal of Human Resources. His research has been supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

This paper examines the impact of industrial robots on workplace safety in China. We find that a one-standard-deviation increase in robot exposure reduces annual workplace accidents and fatalities by 0.100 and 0.0133 cases per thousand population, compared to sample averages of 0.122 accidents and 0.0351 fatalities. These findings are robust to an instrumental variable strategy and various robustness checks. Our analysis of injuries in household surveys and Baidu search activities reinforces these results.  While a robot-induced decrease in employment can, in principle, mechanically reduce accidents and fatalities, we demonstrate that such a non-employment channel has a minimal impact. Instead, within-occupation improvement in workplace safety plays a more crucial role.