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The employment impact of R&D expenditures and capital formation

Author

Listed:
  • Mariacristina Piva

    () (DISCE, Università Cattolica)

  • Marco Vivarelli

    () (DISCE, Università Cattolica - UNU-MERIT, Maastricht, The Netherlands and IZA, Bonn, Germany)

Abstract

The aim of this paper is twofold. On the one hand, the economic insights about the employment impact of technological change are disentangled starting from the classical economists to nowadays theoretical and empirical analyses. On the other hand, an empirical test is provided; in particular, longitudinal data - covering manufacturing and service sectors over the 1998-2011 period for 11 European countries - are used to run GMM-SYS and LSDVC estimates. Two are the main results: 1) a significant labour-friendly impact of R&D expenditures (mainly related to product innovation) is found; yet, this positive employment effect appears to be entirely due to the medium-and high-tech sectors, while no effect can be detected in the low-tech industries; 2) capital formation is found to be negatively related to employment; this outcome points to a possible labour-saving effect due to the embodied technological change incorporated in gross investment (mainly related to process innovation).

Suggested Citation

  • Mariacristina Piva & Marco Vivarelli, 2017. "The employment impact of R&D expenditures and capital formation," DISCE - Quaderni dell'Istituto di Politica Economica ispe0078, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimenti e Istituti di Scienze Economiche (DISCE).
    • Handle: RePEc:ctc:serie5:ispe0078
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    File URL: http://istituti.unicatt.it/politica-economica-ISPE0078.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    technological change; employment; sectoral analysis; EU;

    JEL classification:

    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes

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