A Factor Exploration and Empirical Study on the Influence of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on Employment: Focus on Korean Sample

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

the article is interesting and worth publishing, it deals with important issues related to the industrial revolution for the future labor market.

Comments:

1.     The biggest objection to this manuscript is the lack of a well-described research methodology, i.e. a scheme of research procedures.

The study consists of several stages, which have not been described by the authors in any way. The proceedings are conducted reliably, but the reader himself/herself must arrange the stages of research, and reading the manuscript reader does not know what awaits him on the next page. The study is quite complicated, so the scheme of conduct will make it easier for the reader to understand the content and can contribute to increasing the citations of the article.

I also have trouble understanding the variable "employment", which is not defined in the article. Employment in the labor economy can be part of the supply of labor or part of the demand for labor. After reading, I assumed that the authors referred to the supply part of the labor market. However, this is not clearly stated. In verse 285 beginning with "The survey target was mainly.." suggests that the subject of the research is enterprises, but I don't think so.. although as I mentioned the variable "employment" is not described.

The lack of a definition of the variable "employment" makes it difficult to understand the results of the study – primarily regression analysis. All explanatory variables (statistically significant) indicate a positive impact – a positive sign of the B-coefficient`. Therefore, should I understand that this impact will increase employment??  Here I come back to the precise definition of the variable "employment".

2.     There is a lack of literature in the field of labor economics in the analysis.

 

The good sides of the manuscript:

- a literature review relating to the research achievements of the Fourth Industrial Revolution,

- carefully conducted empirical research.

 The comments sent are only a proposal to consider, a suggestion to make this manuscript even better.

Kind regards,

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

1. The paper lacks the basis of theoretical and empirical justifications. Prevalent issues of Fourth Industrial Revolution on Employment in Korean were not clearly stated. What are the basic gaps in literature? This should be clearly identified to proof the necessity for this study.

2. The methodology lacks adequate information and justification. What is the unit of analysis? What is the population and sample size? How did you establish the validity and reliability of the research instrument and why? What are the sources of items in the questionnaire?

3. The paper lacks adequate discussions of findings

4. What are the major policy and managerial implications of this study?

5. The authors need to provide an integration of literature, offer an integrated framework, provide value added, and highlight directions for future inquiry.

6. The major contributions to knowledge should be highlighted

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Minor comments:

-       +   A more careful discussion from an economics perspective is needed, at least in section “2. Research Background”. This would increase the appeal of the paper for economists and broaden the readership. The link between technology and employment features in many economic studies, but the present manuscript adopts a simple technical/econometric perspective; moreover, it deals with this problem from a rather philosophical angle (discussing optimistic/pessimistic views). In economics, technological change is usually divided into two types: investment-neutral and investment-specific, depending on how investment is considered (see the model proposed by Fisher 2006 JPE; or the discussion in Vom Lehn & Winberry 2019; Pesaran and Yang 2020 JoE); most importantly, the employment consequences of each type of technology is completely different (see DiCecio 2009 JEDC; Canova et al., 2013 EJ; Dragomirescu-Gaina & Elia, 2021 EL). The authors of the present manuscript develop their hypotheses but make no discussion on whether their 6 constructs belong to any of the two technology types mentioned above. Decision making using big data requires less upfront investment than robotics for example, and the employment impact is a-priori more favorable for big-data decisions than for robotics (that replace humans); in this case it is easy to label big-data decisions as neutral technology and robotics as investment-specific technology. I fear that without a clear guide from established economic theories, the results of any empirical exercise (including the present one) asking whether technology affects employment will be puzzling at most and uninformative. Adding some paragraphs based on the discussion above should help in delivering the message and the interesting results to economists as well.

-       +   I would delete “will” from all 6 hypotheses. One cannot do an empirical analysis on the future data. Present tense is better in formulating the hypotheses.  

-      +    More details about the dataset used in the analysis are needed (in section 4.1). When was the survey conducted? Where in Korea? What was the macroeconomic environment? Was it during the pandemic (when people are pessimists) or during an economic expansion (when people are more optimists)? What is the sectoral/industry distribution of the SMEs/survey respondents? These are all important issues because 4IR ideas are being tested here on some unknown data for the usual reader. Related to this question, what employment data was used in estimation? The overall economy-wide employment? In Logs or in headcounts? Is it the employment status of the survey respondents? If yes, then how was it measured? Not clear at all.

-      +    I would use *, ** and *** to denote statistical significance in Table 7, just as in Table 5. A simple stylised equation describing the model estimated in Table 7 would be nice to have.

 

 References:

 

Canova F., Lopez-Salido D., Michelacci C. The ins and outs of unemployment: An analysis conditional on technology shocks. Econ. J., 123 (569) (2013), pp. 515-539

DiCecio R. Sticky wages and sectoral labor comovement J. Econom. Dynam. Control, 33 (3) (2009), pp. 538-553

Dragomirescu-Gaina, C., Elia. L. Technology shocks and sectoral labour market spill-overs. Economics Letters 201 (2021), 109784.

Fisher J.D. The dynamic effects of neutral and investment-specific technology shocks. J. Political Econ., 114 (3) (2006), pp. 413-451

Pesaran M.H., Yang C.F. Econometric analysis of production networks with dominant units J. Econometrics, 219 (2) (2020), pp. 507-541

Vom Lehn C., Winberry T. The Investment Network, Sectoral Comovement, and the Changing US Business Cycle (No. W26507), National Bureau of Economic Research (2019)

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf