Seminar – Robots, Labour Market Frictions and Corporate Financial Policies

Alice Liu, PhD Candidate in Finance, Eller College of Management, University of Arizona 

Using a novel dataset from the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), I find that robots can transform the labour market landscape and mitigate the impact of labour market frictions on financial policy decisions. Firms with more robots, which reduce labour adjustment costs and operational risk, have higher financial leverage and hold less cash. Such firms rely less on employees and attach less importance to gaining a bargaining advantage over unions. The effects of robots on corporate financial policies are stronger for firms with more blue collar workers. When facing greater foreign competition, firms with more robots are able to adopt less conservative financial policies. The effects of minimum wage increases on corporate financial policies are weaker for firms with more robots.

Speaker bio

Alice Liu is a PhD Candidate in Finance at the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona. She received her MS in Finance from the University of Virginia. Alice’s research is concentrated in the areas of corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, labour and finance, and machine learning. Her work has been accepted in top conferences including Financial Intermediation Research Society (FIRS), Midwest Finance Association (MFA), American Accounting Association (AAA) and so on. She received several awards and grants, including Best Paper Award in Corporate Finance at Southwestern Finance Association (SWFA), AFA Travel Grant, the University of Arizona and University of Virginia Research Grant, National Scholarship for Academic Perfection (Top 0.5%) from China Ministry of Education, and the Second Prize of China Mathematics Competition.

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Meeting ID: 984 681 862