By Siddharth Singh, 15th April 2015
The robots, they are coming. The International Federation of Robotics (a German organisation) forecasts a massive uptake of industrial robots in the next few years, particularly in China which is projected to witness an industrial robot growth of 174% between 2013 and 2017.
Industrial robots are employed when they are able to do more – and cost less – than their human counterparts. Indeed, raised productivity and therefore output (in the short run) are the motivation and outcomes of greater automation in production. Intuitively, this would at least lead to the restructuring of the labour force, if not aggregate job losses.
Jeffery Sachs (at The Earth Institute at Columbia University and the author of The End of Poverty) along with LaGarda and Benzell of Boston University explore the impact of robots in the economy through a theoretical framework in a working paper for NBER. They write,
“Our…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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