Automation and Unemployment : Does Collective Bargaining Moderate Their Association?

The stock of robots used in industrial production more than doubled over the last two decades. Empirically, the direction of the association between automation and (un-)employment varies across countries. Which factors explain this cross-country variation? We argue that differences in collective bargaining systems play a role. We structure the collective bargaining systems of 37 advanced countries by the degree of coordination of their collective bargaining and by the strength of labor unions. This results in four types of collective bargaining systems. We investigate whether the association between increased automation and the unemployment rates of different societal groups differs across collective bargaining systems. Our findings indicate that increased automation is positively associated with unemployment in countries where collective bargaining is weak. In coordinated systems the association is muted, notably for workers with medium skill levels. We cannot unveil indications of insider-outsider behavior of labor unions