Appetite for Destruction. A firm-level portrait of automation in Poland

This paper documents the main drivers of automation at the firm level in Poland. Based on a unique occupation-firm level dataset with direct measures of automation, we provide a set of stylized facts on how firms have adopted and plan to adopt automation, as well as the implicit gap in automation. It is found that automation is not only adopted in manufacturing but is broadly applied in other industries. Despite significant differences between industries and occupations, firm-level heterogeneity plays a crucial role in the overall variation of automation measures. At the firm level, more productive firms exhibit a higher degree of both current and potential automation, which on average implies a larger gap for further automation. In particular, it is found that enterprises with higher employment automate their production because the adoption of automation is related to non-negligible fixed costs, which can be easily absorbed by larger firms. Moreover, recent and future developments in automation are more intensive in industries that have experienced previous inflows of FDI and, to a smaller extent, in branches that focus on R&D activity. Additionally, we also find some supportive evidence in favor of the learning-by-exporting mechanism because exporting firms more often automate their production. However, the link between exporting status and automation is quite heterogeneous and depends crucially on the nature of trade linkages. In general, exporters specialized in producing intermediates at early stages of GVC (forward linkages) lag behind their counterparts that are closer to final demand (backward participation). We also document an appetite for further automation, which can be observed as current adopters likely automating their production to a larger extent.