Analysis

Recent improvements in robotics have rekindled ancient fears about the impact of robotics on humankind. Unfortunately, existing data seldom distinguishes robots from other types of automation, so research into their impact so far has been difficult. This article introduces research from a new Statistics Canada dataset, Robots!, on the impact of robots at the firm-level. The article examines the impact of robot investment on firm performance and employment at the enterprise level.

Recent advances in artificial intelligence have rekindled ancient fears that robots will replace humans in the economy. Previous waves of automation changed but did not reduce labour’s role, but robots’ human-like flexibility could make this time different. Whether or not it will is an empirical question that has lacked suitable data to answer. This paper describes the creation of a dataset to fill the evidence gap in Canada. Robots! is firm-level panel data on robot adoption created using Canadian import data. The data identify a substantial amount of the robot investment in the Canadian economy from 1996 to 2017. Although many robots are imported by robotics wholesalers or programmers for resale, the majority of them can be attributed to their final (direct) adopting firm. The data can be used to study the impact of robot adoption at the economic region, industry or firm-level.

This study examines how employment and organizations have changed in response to robot adoption. As robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) become increasingly used by firms as the next engine of innovation and productivity growth, their effects on labour, firm practices and productivity have become a subject of growing importance. The study provides the most comprehensive evidence possible at the level of individual businesses on the employment and organizational effects of robot investments.

This paper shows how to estimate the effect of the Canada-United States border on non-energy goods trade at a sub-provincial/state level using Statistics Canada’s Surface Transportation File (STF), augmented with United States domestic trade data. It uses a gravity model framework to compare cross-border to domestic trade flows among 201 Canadian and United States regions in year 2012. It shows that some 25 years after the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement (the North American Free Trade Agreement’s predecessor) was ratified, the cost of trading goods across the border still amounts to a 30% tariff on bilateral trade between Canadian and United States regions. The paper also demonstrates how these estimates can be used along with general equilibrium Poisson pseudo maximum likelihood (GEPPML) methods to describe the effect of changing border costs on North American trade patterns and regional welfare.

This article in the Economic Insights series examines the impact of the Canada–United States border and the potential effects of changing the trade costs it imposes between and within the two countries at a fine geographical scale. The analysis is based on a structural gravity model of trade estimated using Statistics Canada’s Surface Transportation File and the United States Census Bureau’s Commodity Flow Survey. The model estimates the general equilibrium effects that Canada–United States border costs have on trade patterns and welfare, which can be illustrated at a fine regional scale. Maps are used to depict how increases and decreases in border frictions affect not only Canada–United States trade, but also domestic trade flows. The maps show considerable regional variation in both types of trade when conditions at the border change.

This paper uses data from Statistics Canada's Longitudinal Employment Analysis Program database to study the distribution of annual employment growth rates in Canada over the 2000-to-2009 period, with a special emphasis on firms in the tails of the distribution, referred to here as High-Growth Firms (HGFs) and Rapidly Shrinking Firms (RSFs).

The study has three objectives. First, it describes the distributions of employment growth rates in Canada to see whether they are consistent with observations in other countries. Second, it quantifies the contribution of HGFs and RSFs to aggregate job creation and destruction. The third objective is to examine, using quantile regression techniques, the role of firm size and firm age in the performance of HGFs and RSFs.

This paper examines whether Canadian firms of different sizes (in terms of employment) grow at different rates year-on-year. The data are from Statistics Canada's Longitudinal Employment Analysis Program and cover the 1999-to-2008 period. The methodology is similar to that used by Haltiwanger, Jarmin and Miranda (2010) for the United States: controls are used for firm age, and possible bias from short-term regression to the mean is removed by sizing firms according to their average number of employees in both previous and current years.

Recent improvements in robotics have rekindled ancient fears about the impact of robotics on humankind. Unfortunately, existing data seldom distinguishes robots from other types of automation, so research into their impact so far has been difficult. This article introduces research from a new Statistics Canada dataset, Robots!, on the impact of robots at the firm-level. The article examines the impact of robot investment on firm performance and employment at the enterprise level.

Recent advances in artificial intelligence have rekindled ancient fears that robots will replace humans in the economy. Previous waves of automation changed but did not reduce labour’s role, but robots’ human-like flexibility could make this time different. Whether or not it will is an empirical question that has lacked suitable data to answer. This paper describes the creation of a dataset to fill the evidence gap in Canada. Robots! is firm-level panel data on robot adoption created using Canadian import data. The data identify a substantial amount of the robot investment in the Canadian economy from 1996 to 2017. Although many robots are imported by robotics wholesalers or programmers for resale, the majority of them can be attributed to their final (direct) adopting firm. The data can be used to study the impact of robot adoption at the economic region, industry or firm-level.

This study examines how employment and organizations have changed in response to robot adoption. As robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) become increasingly used by firms as the next engine of innovation and productivity growth, their effects on labour, firm practices and productivity have become a subject of growing importance. The study provides the most comprehensive evidence possible at the level of individual businesses on the employment and organizational effects of robot investments.

This paper shows how to estimate the effect of the Canada-United States border on non-energy goods trade at a sub-provincial/state level using Statistics Canada’s Surface Transportation File (STF), augmented with United States domestic trade data. It uses a gravity model framework to compare cross-border to domestic trade flows among 201 Canadian and United States regions in year 2012. It shows that some 25 years after the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement (the North American Free Trade Agreement’s predecessor) was ratified, the cost of trading goods across the border still amounts to a 30% tariff on bilateral trade between Canadian and United States regions. The paper also demonstrates how these estimates can be used along with general equilibrium Poisson pseudo maximum likelihood (GEPPML) methods to describe the effect of changing border costs on North American trade patterns and regional welfare.

This article in the Economic Insights series examines the impact of the Canada–United States border and the potential effects of changing the trade costs it imposes between and within the two countries at a fine geographical scale. The analysis is based on a structural gravity model of trade estimated using Statistics Canada’s Surface Transportation File and the United States Census Bureau’s Commodity Flow Survey. The model estimates the general equilibrium effects that Canada–United States border costs have on trade patterns and welfare, which can be illustrated at a fine regional scale. Maps are used to depict how increases and decreases in border frictions affect not only Canada–United States trade, but also domestic trade flows. The maps show considerable regional variation in both types of trade when conditions at the border change.

This paper uses data from Statistics Canada's Longitudinal Employment Analysis Program database to study the distribution of annual employment growth rates in Canada over the 2000-to-2009 period, with a special emphasis on firms in the tails of the distribution, referred to here as High-Growth Firms (HGFs) and Rapidly Shrinking Firms (RSFs).

The study has three objectives. First, it describes the distributions of employment growth rates in Canada to see whether they are consistent with observations in other countries. Second, it quantifies the contribution of HGFs and RSFs to aggregate job creation and destruction. The third objective is to examine, using quantile regression techniques, the role of firm size and firm age in the performance of HGFs and RSFs.

This paper examines whether Canadian firms of different sizes (in terms of employment) grow at different rates year-on-year. The data are from Statistics Canada's Longitudinal Employment Analysis Program and cover the 1999-to-2008 period. The methodology is similar to that used by Haltiwanger, Jarmin and Miranda (2010) for the United States: controls are used for firm age, and possible bias from short-term regression to the mean is removed by sizing firms according to their average number of employees in both previous and current years.