In most Western, industrialised countries the workforce is ageing rapidly. In order to assess the possible consequences of an ageing workforce, this paper measures the impact of changes in the age structure of establishments on productivity using representative linked employer-employee panel data. We take into account that the levels as well as the changes in the age structure of establishments and their production are likely to be simultaneously determined and apply dynamic GMM methods. We find that establishment productivity increases with the share of employees until the age of 50-55 and only decreases slightly afterwards. Our findings suggest that previous estimations are biased because they either do not take into account endogeneity, time dependencies, or crucial information correlated with age shares and productivity. Large standard deviations point to important variation in the age productivity profile among establishments. --
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by ZEW - Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung / Center for European Economic Research in its series ZEW Discussion Papers with number
09-020.
Find related papers by JEL classification: J11 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Demographic Trends and Forecasts J14 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of the Elderly; Economics of the Handicapped J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
Did you know? Each page is provided with a technical contact, in case something is not right with the supplied information. See under "publisher info".