Automation is a big concern in modern societies in view of its widespread impact on many
socioeconomic issues including income, jobs, and productivity. While previous studies have
concentrated on determining the effects on jobs and salaries, our aim is to understand how
automation affects productivity, and how some policies, such as taxes on robots or universal
basic income, moderate or aggravate those effects. To this end, we have designed an
experiment where workers make productive effort decisions, and managers can choose
between workers and robots to do these tasks. In our baseline treatment, we measure the
effort made by workers who may be replaced by robots, and also elicit firm replacement
decisions. Subsequently, we carry out treatments in which workers have a universal basic
income of about a fifth of the workers’ median wages, or where there is a tax levy on firms
who replace workers by robots. We complete the picture of the impact of automation by
looking into the coexistence of workers and robots with part-time jobs. We find that the
threat of a robot substitution does not affect the amount of effort exerted by workers. Also,
neither universal basic income nor a tax on robots decrease workers’ effort. We observe that
the robot substitution tax reduces the probability of worker substitution. Finally, workers that
benefit from managerial decisions to not substitute them by more productive robots do not
increase their effort level. Our conclusions shed light on the interplay of policy and workers
behavior under pervasive automation
