Age Biased Technical and Organisational Change, Training and Employment Prospects of Older Workers

Luc Behaghel, Eve Caroli and Muriel Roger

No 5544, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We analyse the role of training in mitigating the negative impact of technical and organizational changes on the employment prospects of older workers. Using a panel of French firms in the late 1990s, we first estimate wage bill share equations for different age groups. Consistently with what is found in the literature, we find that adopting new technologies and innovative work practices negatively affects the wage bill share of older workers. In contrast, training older workers more than average increases their share in the wage bill in the next period. So, training contributes to offset the negative impact of ICT and innovative work practices. However, it does not reduce the age bias associated with these innovative devices: the interaction terms between training and ICT/innovative work practices are either insignificant or negative. As a second step, we estimate the impact of ICT, innovative work practices and training on employment flows by age group in the next period. We get similar results to those obtained with wage bill shares. Overall, training appears to have a positive impact on the employability of older workers, but it offers limited prospects to dampen the age bias associated with new technologies and innovative work practices.

Keywords: training; organizational change; technical change; older workers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J14 J24 J26 O30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2011-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-bec, nep-eur and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Published - published in: Economica, 2014, 81(322), 368-389

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Related works:
Journal Article: Age-biased Technical and Organizational Change, Training and Employment Prospects of Older Workers (2014)
Working Paper: Age-biased Technical and Organizational Change, Training and Employment Prospects of Older Workers (2014)
Working Paper: Age-biased Technical and Organizational Change, Training and Employment Prospects of Older Workers (2014)
Working Paper: Age Biased Technical and Organisational Change, Training and Employment Prospects of Older Workers (2013)
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