JEMS | Professor Qi Jianhong Makes Important Research Progress in Robot Application and Resource Allocation

Recently, the collaborative paper Robots, Operational Flexibility, and Firm-Level Inefficiency Gap by Professor Qi Jianhong from the School of Economics was published online in Journal of Economics & Management Strategy (JEMS), an international authoritative journal in the field of industrial organization and strategic management. Based on theoretical and empirical research, this paper finds that the application of robots significantly narrows the firm-level efficiency gap by improving operational flexibility, confirming its positive impact on reducing resource misallocation.

In this study, the firm-level efficiency gap is defined as the gap between the marginal product of labor and the market wage, and is used as a proxy indicator for the degree to which enterprises deviate from the operational efficiency frontier. The study constructs a theoretical framework in which enterprises endogenously allocate robots and labor in different production tasks according to comparative advantages. Since robots have lower adjustment costs than labor, increasing the robot-labor ratio can enhance operational flexibility. This flexibility enables enterprises to respond to exogenous demand shocks more frequently and gradually, thus maintaining labor input at the optimal level and narrowing the efficiency gap. On this basis, this study uses data of Chinese manufacturing enterprises from 2000 to 2013 for empirical testing. The estimation results show that every 10% increase in the robot-labor ratio leads to a 7.12% decrease in the efficiency gap. On the one hand, this effect strengthens over time, indicating significant cumulative benefits from robot integration; on the other hand, this effect is heterogeneous: the narrowing of the efficiency gap is more pronounced in enterprises with positive efficiency gaps, higher capital-labor ratios and high productivity, focusing on the domestic market rather than exports, facing strict financing constraints or operating in slow-paced industries. Further mechanism analysis shows that enterprises applying robots are more inclined to make continuous small-scale operational adjustments rather than large-scale and disruptive transformations, verifying the role of improving operational flexibility in reducing resource misallocation.

Co-authors of the paper: Associate Professor Shi Qing, Shanghai University; Professor Tan Yong, Nanjing University of Finance and Economics.

Qi Jianhong is Professor and PhD Supervisor at the School of Economics, Shandong University, Distinguished Professor of "Taishan Scholars" in Shandong Province, Outstanding Young and Middle-aged Scholar of Shandong University, and Chief Expert of the Major Program of the National Social Science Foundation of China. Her main research directions include artificial intelligence and export upgrading, foreign direct investment (FDI), and international trade theory and policy. She has published more than 100 academic papers in CSSCI and SSCI core journals such as Economic Research Journal, The Journal of World Economy, China Industrial Economics, Journal of Financial Research, Economics (Quarterly), Journal of Environmental Economics and Management (JEEM), Journal of Corporate Finance (JCF), and Journal of Economics & Management Strategy (JEMS), and has presided over a number of national-level projects such as the Major Program of the National Social Science Foundation of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the Humanities and Social Sciences Project of the Ministry of Education.