1. Introduction
Technological innovations fusing the physical, digital and biological domains and labelled as the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” (4IR) are creating opportunities to revolutionize economic and social systems in fundamental ways unparalleled by previous industrial revolutions (Schwab, 2017). In this paper, we investigate the impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on the wage levels of firms in 27 OECD economies who are inventors of 4IR technologies. Here, 4IR technologies refer to technologies that leverage the potential for low-cost, “intelligent” devices for data exchange between humans and machines, such as genetics, artificial intelligence, robotics, nanotechnology, 3D printing and biotechnology, to name just a few.
The recent transformative role of the 4IR has attracting a surge of interest from social scientists, exploring and debating the economic and social consequences brought about by the 4IR, especially in its labor market and (re)distributional outcomes....