Robots and risk of COVID-19 workplace contagion: Evidence from Italy

• Published in: Technological forecasting & social change Vol. 173; p. 121097
• Main Authors: Caselli, Mauro, Fracasso, Andrea, Traverso, Silvio
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Elsevier Inc 01.12.2021; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: Coronaviruses; COVID-19; Economic systems; Employment; Occupational safety; Resilience; Risk; Risk of contagion; Robotisation; Robots; SARS-CoV-2; Workplaces; Italy; COVID-19; I19; SARS-CoV-2; Robotisation; Risk of contagion; O33
• ISSN: 0040-1625; 1873-5509; 0040-1625
• DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2021.121097

•We study the risk of Covid-19 contagion in Italy, one of the countries worst affected.•We study the relationship between risk of Covid-19 contagion and adoption of robots.•We exploit for the first time a novel taxonomy of risk of contagion at industry level.•We provide evidence that industries using more robots exhibit a lower risk of contagion.•We estimate technological frontier and study scope for further robotisation in Italy. This work investigates the cross-industry relationship between robot adoption and the risk of contracting COVID-19 in the workplace in Italy. Using a novel dataset on the risk of workplace contagion, we show that industries employing more robots tend to exhibit lower risks, thereby providing some empirical support for the widely held, but so far untested, hypothesis that robots can help mitigate the risk of contagion among workers by reducing the need for physical interactions. While we acknowledge the relevance of robots in the fight against COVID-19 and their possible role in enhancing the resilience of economic systems against future pandemics, we also thoroughly discuss a series of potential trade-offs between workplace safety and employment conditions that could arise (especially in the short run) due to a substantial increase in the rate of robot adoption.