Italian manufacturing firms have been losing ground with respect to many of their European competitors. This paper presents some empirical evidence on the effects of innovation on employment growth and therefore on firms' productivity with the goal of understanding the roots of such poor performance. We use firm level data from the last three surveys on Italian manufacturing firms conducted by Mediocredito-Capitalia, which cover the period 1995-2003. Using a slightly modified version of the model proposed by Harrison, Jaumandreu, Mairesse and Peters (HJMP 2005), which separates employment growth rates into those associated with old and new products, we find no evidence of significant employment displacement effects stemming from process innovation. The sources of employment growth during the period are split equally between the net contribution of product innovation and the net contribution from sales growth of old products. However, the contribution of product innovation to employment growth is somewhat lower than in the four European countries considered in HJMP 2005, and the contribution of innovation in general to productivity growth is almost nil in Italy during this period.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
13296.
Length: Date of creation: Aug 2007 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13296
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Find related papers by JEL classification: D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Capital and Total Factor Productivity; Capacity J0 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General J20 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - General L20 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - General O30 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Technological Change - - - General
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Zvi Griliches & Jacques Mairesse, 1984.
"Productivity and R&D at the Firm Level,"
NBER Chapters,
in: R & D, Patents, and Productivity, pages 339-374
National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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