Robot adoption and FDI driven transformation in the automotive industry

This paper explores the relationship between inward foreign direct investments and the adoption of industrial robots, across different segments of the automotive value chain. Using the International Federation of Robotics and FDI Market datasets at a fine level of disaggregation of the automotive sector, we investigate the extent to which FDIs are related to the operational stock of industrial robots in 34 countries over the period 2005-2014. We find distinct patterns linking FDIs and robot adoption for different groups of countries and for different segments of the automotive value chain, that, is assembling and components production. With some relevant exceptions, FDIs are found to be highly correlated with robot adoption in the assembling segment across major leading countries. However, this correlation becomes weak for components production. To explain this differential role of FDIs in robot adoption, we formulate hypotheses around the country-specific drivers of robotisation for the components segment by pointing to the role of domestic ecosystems of suppliers and industrial policy as drivers of technology absorption and diffusion.