97411 20231116120809.0 doi 10.1057/s41599-020-00676-8 sideral 121804 ART-2020-121804 eng Cabrales, A. Robots, labor markets, and universal basic income 2020 Access copy available to the general public Unrestricted Automation is a big concern in modern societies in view of its widespread impact on many socioeconomic issues including income, jobs, and productivity. While previous studies have concentrated on determining the effects on jobs and salaries, our aim is to understand how automation affects productivity, and how some policies, such as taxes on robots or universal basic income, moderate or aggravate those effects. To this end, we have designed an experiment where workers make productive effort decisions, and managers can choose between workers and robots to do these tasks. In our baseline treatment, we measure the effort made by workers who may be replaced by robots, and also elicit firm replacement decisions. Subsequently, we carry out treatments in which workers have a universal basic income of about a fifth of the workers’ median wages, or where there is a tax levy on firms who replace workers by robots. We complete the picture of the impact of automation by looking into the coexistence of workers and robots with part-time jobs. We find that the threat of a robot substitution does not affect the amount of effort exerted by workers. Also, neither universal basic income nor a tax on robots decrease workers’ effort. We observe that the robot substitution tax reduces the probability of worker substitution. Finally, workers that benefit from managerial decisions to not substitute them by more productive robots do not increase their effort level. Our conclusions shed light on the interplay of policy and workers behavior under pervasive automation. info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/MCIU-FEDER/PGC2018-098186-B-I00 info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess by http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/ 0.0 2020 Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous) 2020 Economics, Econometrics and Finance (miscellaneous) 2020 Social Sciences (miscellaneous) 2020 Psychology (miscellaneous) 2020 Business, Management and Accounting (miscellaneous) 2020 info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion Hernández, P. Sánchez, A. (orcid)0000-0003-1874-2881 7, 1 (2020), 185 Humanit. soc. sci. commun. Humanities & social sciences communications 2662-9992 714840 http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/97411/files/texto_completo.pdf Versión publicada 70969 http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/97411/files/texto_completo.jpg?subformat=icon icon Versión publicada oai:zaguan.unizar.es:97411 articulos driver 2023-11-16-12:00:42 ARTICLE