IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/indcch/v24y2015i5p875-949..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Editor's Choice Allocation of human capital and innovation at the frontier: firm-level evidence on Germany and the Netherlands

Author

Listed:
  • Eric Bartelsman
  • Sabien Dobbelaere
  • Bettina Peters

Abstract

This article examines how productivity effects of human capital and innovation vary at different points of the conditional productivity distribution. Our analysis draws upon two large unbalanced panels of 6634 enterprises in Germany and 14,841 enterprises in the Netherlands over the period 2000–2008, considering five manufacturing and services industries that differ in the level of technological intensity. Industries in the Netherlands are characterized by a larger average proportion of high-skilled employees and industries in Germany by a more unequal distribution of human capital intensity. In Germany, average innovation performance is higher in all industries, except for low-technology manufacturing, and in the Netherlands the innovation performance distributions are more dispersed. In both countries, we observe nonlinearities in the productivity effects of investing in product innovation in the majority of industries. Frontier firms enjoy the highest returns to product innovation whereas for process innovation the most negative returns are observed in the best-performing enterprises of most industries. We find that in both countries the returns to human capital increase with proximity to the technological frontier in industries with a low level of technological intensity. Strikingly, a negative complementarity effect between human capital and proximity to the technological frontier is observed in knowledge-intensive services, which is most pronounced for the Netherlands. Suggestive evidence suggests an interpretation of a winner-takes-all market in knowledge-intensive services.

Suggested Citation

  • Eric Bartelsman & Sabien Dobbelaere & Bettina Peters, 2015. "Editor's Choice Allocation of human capital and innovation at the frontier: firm-level evidence on Germany and the Netherlands," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 24(5), pages 875-949.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:indcch:v:24:y:2015:i:5:p:875-949.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/icc/dtu038
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Pietro Santoleri, 2020. "Innovation and job creation in (high-growth) new firms," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 29(3), pages 731-756.
    2. V. Vandenberghe, 2018. "The Contribution of Educated Workers to Firms’ Efficiency Gains: The Key Role of Proximity to the ‘Local’ Frontier," De Economist, Springer, vol. 166(3), pages 259-283, September.
    3. Morikawa, Masayuki, 2019. "Innovation in the service sector and the role of patents and trade secrets: Evidence from Japanese firms," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 43-51.
    4. Rosalia Castellano & Gaetano Musella & Gennaro Punzo, 2023. "Does context matter? Exploring the effects of productive structures on the relationship between innovation and workforce skills’ complementarity," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 57(3), pages 1991-2011, June.
    5. Dolores An~o´n Higo´n & Juan A. Man~ez & Mari´a E. Rochina-Barrachina & Amparo Sanchis & Juan A. Sanchis-Llopis, 2017. "The determinants of firms’ convergence to the European TFP frontier," Working Papers 1707, Department of Applied Economics II, Universidad de Valencia.
    6. Dolores An~o´n Higo´n & Juan A. Man~ez & Mari´a E. Rochina-Barrachina & Amparo Sanchis & Juan A. Sanchis, 2018. "Follow the leader: Evidence of the Productivity catch-up of European firms," Working Papers 1806, Department of Applied Economics II, Universidad de Valencia.
    7. Caterina Santi & Pietro Santoleri, 2017. "Exploring the link between innovation and growth in Chilean firms," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 49(2), pages 445-467, August.
    8. Dolores Añón Higón & Juan A. Máñez & María E. Rochina-Barrachina & Amparo Sanchis & Juan A. Sanchis, 2022. "Firms’ distance to the European productivity frontier," Eurasian Business Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 12(2), pages 197-228, June.
    9. Vincent Vandenberghe, 2017. "The Contribution of Educated Workers to Firms' Efficiency Gains The Key Role of the Proximity to Frontier," LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES 2017012, Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES).
    10. Qiao Guangshun, 2023. "Survival of the Fittest: The Long-run Productivity Analysis of the Listed Information Technology Companies in the US Stock Market," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment Journal, De Gruyter, vol. 17(1), pages 1-11, January.
    11. Creemers, Sarah & Peeters, Ludo & Quiroz Castillo, Juan Luis & Vancauteren, Mark & Voordeckers, Wim, 2023. "Family firms and the labor productivity controversy: A distributional analysis of varying labor productivity gaps," Journal of Family Business Strategy, Elsevier, vol. 14(2).
    12. Figal Garone, Lucas & López Villalba, Paula A. & Maffioli, Alessandro & Ruzzier, Christian A., 2020. "Firm-level productivity in Latin America and the Caribbean," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(2), pages 186-192.
    13. Selma Leticia Capinzaiki Ottonicar & Paloma Marin Arraiza & Fabiano Armellini, 2020. "Opening Science and Innovation: Opportunities for Emerging Economies," Foresight and STI Governance (Foresight-Russia till No. 3/2015), National Research University Higher School of Economics, vol. 14(4), pages 95-111.
    14. Busom, Isabel & Vélez-Ospina, Jorge Andrés, 2017. "Innovation, Public Support, and Productivity in Colombia. A Cross-industry Comparison," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 75-94.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:indcch:v:24:y:2015:i:5:p:875-949.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/icc .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.