"Robots and the regionalization of global value chains"

Published in Research Policy

Authors:

Roberto Antonietti,  Department of Economics and Management - University of Padua
Chiara Burlina,  Department of Economics and Management - University of Padua & Fondazione Nord Est
Chiara Franco, Università di Pisa & CIRCLE, Lund University

How does automation reshape global value chains?
Using country-industry-year data for 7 European countries and 10 manufacturing sectors (1995-2018), the authors show that:
The relationship is (Granger) causal:
• Higher exposure to industrial robots drives GVC regionalization (not the reverse)
• Automation is associated with a shift in sourcing away from Asia and toward closer partners, especially Eastern Europe
• In other words, robots support nearshoring within “Factory Europe”
• Effects are stronger in upstream and labour-intensive sectors

Policy takeaways
• Automation can strengthen regional resilience without dismantling openness
• Industrial, skills, and trade policies should be designed together, not in silos
• Competitiveness may hinge less on reshoring incentives and more on automation-enabled regional integration

Research takeaway
Robots don’t end global value chains - they redraw their spatial boundaries.

Click here and read the full paper