The Impact Of Technological Change On Employment: Evidence From A Firm-Level Survey Of Long Island Manufacturers

Recent studies of capital-skill complementarity suffer from several important empirical limitations and a theoretical framework that treats technological change as exogenous. This paper addresses some of these limitations using a new, detailed firm-level dataset on technology usage and labor composition. Based on two-stage estimation procedures, our results imply that technological change leads to a shift in labor composition and compensation in favor of white-collar workers.     

Employment dynamics in foreign and domestic plants: Evidence from Irish manufacturing

In this paper we investigate the driving factors behind the diverse employment performances of indigenous and foreign‐owned (multinational) plants in Ireland. Examining aggregate job creation and job destruction rates we find that the net gain of the foreign sector in Irish manufacturing employment was due to a considerably lower rate of job destruction and a slightly higher job creation rate. An econometric investigation into the determinants of net employment growth at the plant level lends further credence to the argument that foreign plants performed better than domestic plants. Even after controlling for a number of plant and sector specific effects, multinationals experienced greater net employment growth rates than their indigenous counterparts.     

Sources Of Technical Progress: Empirical Evidence From Swiss Industry

The aim of this paper is to empirically investigate the sources of technological opportunities. The analysis is based on a survey conducted among 358 Swiss R&D executives in 1988. The most important results can be summarized as follows: 1. Market organizations are perceived as the most important source of contributions to technical progress. The most important source is firms within the same industry; second is product users; and third, suppliers of materials and equipment used in manufacturing. 2. The contribution of non-market organizations seems relatively unimportant. University research, other government research institutions, state companies and agencies, professional and technical associations and individual inventors make small contributions. 3. Science also contributes to technical progress, even if only selectively. Education and training in physics, computer science, materials science, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering and applied chemistry are all considered relevant to technical progress in Switzerland. 4. Generally, university research is not considered as relevant to technical progress in the industries surveyed. In certain fields, such as computer science, materials science and electrical engineering, university research does, however, seem relevant to technical progress.     

Research,Innovation And Productivi[Ty: An Econometric Analysis At The Firm Level

This paper studies the links between productivity, innovation and research at the firm level. We introduce three new features: (i) A structural model that explains productivity by innovation output, and innovation output by research investment: (ii) New data on French manufacturing firms, including the number of European patents and the percentage share of innovative sales, as well as firm-level demand pull and technology push indicators; (iii) Econometric methods which correct for selectivity and simultaneity biases and take into account the statistical features of the available data: only a small proportion of firms engage in research activities and/or apply for patents; productivity, innovation and research are endogenously determined; research investment and capital are truncated variables, patents are count data and innovative sales are interval data.

We find that using the more widespread methods, and the more usual data and model specification, may lead to sensibly different estimates. We find in particular that simultaneity tends to interact with selectivity, and that both sources of biases must be taken into account together. However our main results are consistent with many of the stylized facts of the empirical literature. The probability of engaging in research (R&D) for a firm increases with its size (number of employees), its market share and diversification, and with the demand pull and technology push indicators. The research effort (R&D capital intensity) of a firm engaged in research increases with the same variables, except for size (its research capital being strictly proportional to size). The firm innovation output, as measured by patent numbers or innovative sales, rises with its research effort and with the demand pull and technology indicators, either directly or indirectly through their effects on research. Finally, firm productivity correlates positively with a higher innovation output, even when controlling for the skill composition of labor as well as for physical capital intensity.     

Diffusion Of Microelectronics And Advanced Manufacturing Technology: A Review Of National Surveys

Applications of microelectronics in products and the use of advanced manufacturing technology in production are important factors driving innovation, productivity improvement and economic growth. Until the early 1980s there were few comprehensive national surveys of the diffusion of these technologies or of their impacts. This paper reviews surveys of firms using these technologies, discusses survey comparability and summarises key empirical results. The value of carefully constructed internationally comparable surveys for analysis and policy formulation is emphasised, and new directions for surveys are suggested.