China, AI, robots, taxation: essays in applied microeconomics

Thesis

This thesis consists of four self-contained essays in applied microeconomics. The first exploits China’s accession to the WTO to investigate the impact on Indian manufacturing firms of improved access to intermediate inputs, and finds a persistent quality-upgrading effect which ripples out across the production network. The second examines the impact of artificial intelligence on hiring and wages in the Indian service sector, using a novel dataset of 15 million online vacancy posts, and finds evidence of direct negative effects within incumbent firms. The third paper explores the impacts on developing countries of robot adoption at home and abroad, drawing on industry- and firm-level robot data from a wide range of countries, and outlines the groups most likely to benefit – and those most likely to lose out. Finally, the fourth paper investigates the sources of observed heterogeneity in VAT pass-through, using reforms across 14 Eurozone countries between 1999 and 2013, and finds important roles for product market regulation and product quality.

Authors: Copestake, A

• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: Artificial intelligence; International trade; Microeconomics; Value-added tax; Industrial robotics
• Subjects: Economics