The Macroeconomics of Automation: Sorting Frictions and the Asymmetry Between Robots and AI

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Abstract

Does automation rebuild work around the people it displaces, and does the answer differ for robots and AI? Reinstatement and sorting rates come from commuting-zone moments under design-based inference, the physical rate bracketed by Danish evidence. I model both frontiers advancing together, each reinstating tasks it destroys, workers sorting across the rest. Cognitive displacement scrambles sorting, a friction the physical frontier lacks. Robots deliver more productivity per unit of advance than AI in every sorting-parameter draw, in 98.5 percent adding the physical rate’s sampling error, and under either estimate of AI’s disputed reinstatement rate. The point-estimate gap is about a quarter. The steady-state ranking depends on how transitional sorting is, which I bound. AI raises the skill premium and does twice the labor-share damage. A planner subsidizes robot research at 1.4 to 2.1 times the AI rate across the central ninety percent, and a uniform automation tax locally lowers welfare.

Citation

Chávez Padilla, Carlos César. 2026. “The Macroeconomics of Automation: Sorting Frictions and the Asymmetry Between Robots and AI.” Working paper.