Abstract: Using provincial panel data on China’s industrial sector, this paper examines the impacts of industrial robots on factor income distribution. We find that the application of industrial robots significantly lowers the distributional shares of labor factors in the industrial sector in China. By decomposing components of labor’s share of income, the paper further analyzes the impacts of industrial robots on factor income distribution. The negative impacts of technology on the changes of labor’s share of income are mainly through employment substitution effects and mildly through wage promotion effects, but not through the effects of efficiency gains. Both direct impacts and channel analyses support the short-run success of the “replacement of workers with robots” incentive policy. Whether the application of industrial robots is biased towards capital and imposes negative impacts on factor income distribution through wage channels remains to be verified in the long run. 

Keywords: Industrial Robots; Factor Income Distribution; Labor’s Share of Income; Replacement of Workers with Robots; Policy Evaluation

Reprints: Xinhua Digest, China Social Science Excellence

Abstract: Using confidential offer-level data from the US housing market, this paper analyzes the impact of various listing and counteroffer pricing strategies in the housing bilateral bargaining process. We observe that sellers tend to cluster their list prices around “charm” numbers (e.g. 349,999) and round numbers (i.e., 350,000), while buyers' counteroffers mainly cluster around round numbers. Through the repeated sales approach, we demonstrate that these pricing strategies significantly influence housing transaction outcomes. Round and charm listing prices are advantageous during bidding wars, leading to higher sales prices and faster transactions, while also attracting more buyer offers. However, in colder markets, round listing prices may result in lower sales prices due to the anchoring effect. Regarding the effects of buyer counteroffer pricing strategies, our findings indicate that round counteroffer prices often lead to lower purchase prices and quicker transactions compared to precise counteroffer prices, despite increasing the risk of impasse. Additionally, we discover a mimicry effect: when buyers mimic the precision of sellers' charm and precise listing prices, the risk of impasse significantly decreases despite the potential for higher purchase prices and slower transactions. Overall, this paper provides novel insights into the effectiveness of different pricing strategies in housing bargaining.

Abstract: This paper uses macro panel data from 2004 to 2017 to analyze the impact of artificial intelligence applications on the labor market empirically. In particular, the paper focuses on how robot application interacts with the aging population differently across countries with different income levels. Our result shows that labor markets in low/middle-income economies are more sensitive to the application of AI, and the effect can be offset by the process of aging. High-income economies are generally less sensitive to the change in AI applications. The result suggests that using AI to complement labor could be a reasonable solution to address the labor force deficiency caused by aging in low/middle-income economies, while it may have a limited impact on high-income economies.

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Automation, Industrial Robot, Labor Income Share, Average Wage, Employment, Labor Force Participation