Job Market Practice Talk: Rihyeon Kang, University of California, Santa Barbara

Biography

Rihyeon is a Ph.D. student in Economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research focuses on labor economics and public economics, specifically examining the intersections of education and demography. She is currently investigating the impact of routine-biased technologies on endogenous human capital investment and educational mismatch in the labor market.

Title

"The Dynamic Effects of Robot Exposure on Human Capital Investment and Labor Market Outcomes"

Abstract

This paper investigates how life-cycle exposure to industrial robots shaped educational investments and labor outcomes for U.S. cohorts (2000–2017). Using a cohort–state pseudo-panel and a shift–share design instrumented with foreign robot diffusion, I estimate dynamic effects employing local projection-style strategies. The results reveal a nuanced pattern: contrary to the expectation that automation-driven skill premiums incentivize immediate college investment, adolescent exposure to robots is initially associated with a decline in college enrollment. This is followed only by a delayed increase in eventual educational attainment. The findings indicate the initial enrollment suppression is driven primarily by a family income channel; liquidity constraints, tightened by robot-induced displacement, initially outweigh the skill premium's signaling effect. The paper further examines these mediating channels and, crucially, tests whether this delayed educational investment ultimately translates into wage gains.