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Robots and the regionalization of global value chains

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  • Antonietti, Roberto
  • Burlina, Chiara
  • Franco, Chiara

Abstract

In this paper, we study whether and to what extent exposure to industrial robots leads to the regionalization of global value chains (GVC) for a group of seven European countries and ten manufacturing sectors. We use country-industry-year data on GVC participation for the period 1995-2018 from the OECD-ICIO database and we merge it with industrial robot data from the IFR. To assess the non-spurious long-run relationship between robots and GVC dynamics, we adopt a panel cointegration approach and dynamic OLS regressions, while we assess the direction of causality using a panel vector error correction approach. Our results suggest that, on average, higher exposure to robotization Granger causes a higher GVC regionalization, which is more pronounced when the source of foreign value-added moves from Asian economies to Eastern Europe. We also find that sectoral heterogeneity matters, since a stronger robot-induced regionalization of GVCs tends to occur in more upstream sectors and with high labour intensity.

Suggested Citation

  • Antonietti, Roberto & Burlina, Chiara & Franco, Chiara, 2026. "Robots and the regionalization of global value chains," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 55(2).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:respol:v:55:y:2026:i:2:s0048733325002021
    DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2025.105373
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