IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/16556.html

Measuring Robot Quality: Has Quality Improvement Slowed Down?

Author

Listed:
  • Fujiwara, Ippei
  • Kimoto, Ryo
  • Shiratsuka, Shigenori
  • Shirota, Toyoichiro

Abstract

This paper measures the extent to which the quality of robots has improved in Japan between 1990 and 2018, by using data from the “Production and Shipments of Manipulators and Robots†of the Japan Robot Association and the “Corporate Goods Price Index†of the Bank of Japan. We first calculate quality-unadjusted robot price indices applying three approaches: the traditional index number approach, the stochastic approach in the spirits of Edgeworth and Jevons, the structural approach. Then, we compute robot quality by dividing quality-unadjusted prices by the quality-adjusted industrial robot price index produced by the Bank of Japan. Based on the three approaches, significant decline in improvement in the quality of robots in the last decade is found. The differences in the growth rates of robot quality between the 2000s and 2010s show substantially negative values of around -3 percentage points per annum.

Suggested Citation

  • Fujiwara, Ippei & Kimoto, Ryo & Shiratsuka, Shigenori & Shirota, Toyoichiro, 2021. "Measuring Robot Quality: Has Quality Improvement Slowed Down?," CEPR Discussion Papers 16556, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:16556
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP16556
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Kosuke ARAI & Ippei FUJIWARA & Toyoichiro SHIROTA, 2021. "Robot Penetration and Task Changes," Discussion papers 21093, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • C43 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Index Numbers and Aggregation
    • E22 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Investment; Capital; Intangible Capital; Capacity
    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • L15 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Information and Product Quality
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:16556. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.