Robotization in Central and Eastern Europe: catching up or dependence?

While in the most developed European countries the combination of fallingrobotpricesandhighwagesboostsrobotization,thesedriving factors do not sufficiently explain why we are experiencing today a sharp increase in deployment of industrial robots in European countries with low wages. Particularly, in Central and Eastern Europe where a decade ago industrial robots were almost nonexistent but today more than 30,000 robots are at work. Hence this paper, by recalculating the data of International Federation of Robotics and EU-KLEMS addresses the main question: What drives and hinders the robotization in Central and Eastern Europe?