The Adoption and Diffusion on Automation Technology--An Empirical Study of Taiwan's Manufacturing Firms

　Based on the data of "The Sixth Survey on Automation Technology" which was conducted in 1991 and had a sample size of 12,594 firms, this study analyzes the adoption and diffusion of five automatic techniques among Taiwan manufacturing firms. The method of nonparametric statistics estimation was used to caculate Gini coefficients as a measure of diffusion degree. In addition, survival analysis was used to analyze the determinants of adoption and diffusion. The results show that the speed of diffusion for the five types of automation was quite rapid. The adoption of automation is influenced by the time accumulation and the probability patterns are different for the five types.