Robots, Exports and Top Income Inequality: Evidence for the U.S.

the top 0.1 percent and the top 0.01 percent), which fuels inequality specifically at the very right tail of the income distribution; (iii) automation leads to increasing exports to high-income and upper-middle-income countries; and (iv) the rise in exports is one of the key mechanisms behind the surge in top income inequality. [...] 1 depicts the evolution of the income share held by the top 1 percent and the number of robots per thousand workers in the U. [...] The data set reports the total taxable income, the average taxable income and the income share of several income segments at the state and metropolitan area levels. [...] We use the IPUMS’ five percent samples for the year 1990 to calculate the share of employment by industry (which is used to calculate the geographic measure of robot adoption) and other relevant economic and demographic variables at the level of metropolitan areas such as the labor force participation (LFP), female LFP, employment shares in the manufacturing, services, and financial sectors,11 fem. [...] Emplj1990 is the number of workers in industry j in LLM l in 1990, Empl1990 is the total number of workers in LLM l in 1990, Robot Stockjt is the stock of robots at the industry-year level, and EMPjt is the number of workers at the industry-year level.