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174
Covid Economics
Issue 17, 13 May 2020
Mitigation of risks of Covid-19
contagion and robotisation:
Evidence from Italy1
Covid Economics 17, 13 May 2020: 174-188
Mauro Caselli,2 Andrea Fracasso3 and Silvio Traverso4
Date submitted: 7 May 2020; Date accepted: 8 May 2020
The rapid and dramatic di usion of the Covid-19 epidemic in
Italy was tackled by the Italian government with social distancing
measures and with the suspension of all economic activities, except
"essential" sectors. A lively policy debate on more re ned criteria
to choose what activities to allow and to suspend in the future led
INAIL (National Institute for Insurance against Accidents at Work)
to develop a measure of the risk of contagion in the workplace. In
this paper we exploit this novel source of information about the risk
of contagion in the workplace to study, for the rst time, the crossindustry relationship between the estimated risk of contagion at
work and the adoption of robots, in order to test the hypothesis that
robotisation may facilitate social distancing and lower the risk of
contagion. The analysis, which includes various controls of possible
automation-related confounding factors and addresses possible
issues of endogeneity, provides evidence that industries employing
more robots per worker in production tend to exhibit a lower risk of
contagion due to Covid-19. Results and policy implications for the
selection of suspension criteria are discussed.
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Financial support received by the Fondazione Caritro (Project 2018.0258) is gratefully acknowledged. The
authors are solely responsible for any errors.
Assistant Professor, School of International Studies and Department of Economics and Management,
University of Trento.
Full Professor, School of International Studies and Department of Economics and Management, University of
Trento.
Postdoctoral Fellow, School of International Studies, University of Trento.
Copyright: Mauro Caselli, Andrea Fracasso and Silvio Traverso
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