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About

Michael Koch is an economist whose research sits at the intersection of automation, labor economics, and firm dynamics. He is best known for his influential work on robot adoption and its microeconomic consequences, most prominently his paper "Robots and Firms" (2021), which has accumulated over 400 citations and stands as one of the field's landmark empirical studies. Drawing on a rich 27-year panel dataset of Spanish manufacturing firms, Koch and his collaborators provided rigorous causal evidence on what drives firms to adopt robots and how such adoption reshapes firm-level outcomes. His subsequent work has deepened this agenda, examining how robot adoption creates technological bias and affects the aggregate labor share, as well as how it influences firm-level labor cost behavior. Most recently, Koch has extended his focus to artificial intelligence, investigating how AI exposure shapes worker stress using German survey data — a timely contribution as policymakers grapple with automation's human costs. Collectively, his research has generated over 450 citations, establishing him as a significant voice in the growing literature on how advanced technologies transform firms, workers, and labor markets.