Firm’s innovation strategies and employment: new evidence from Uruguay

Carlos Bianchi and Hugo Laguna ()
Additional contact information
Hugo Laguna: Universidad de la República (Uruguay). Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración

No 20-06, Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) from Instituto de Economía - IECON

Abstract: A large and rich body of literature has shown that the relationship between innovation and employment is complex and dynamic in nature. From a firm’s level analysis, recent researches have shown heterogeneous empirical patterns for developed and developing countries. This paper contributes by inquiry in the role of innovation strategies as determinants of the firm’s employment growth in a Latin American small middle-income country. Adapting econometric structural models currently in vogue, we discuss the effects of three innovation strategies (Make, Buy, Make&Buy) on the firm’s workforce growth. In line with the literature, we identify a significant positive relation between product innovation associated with Make and Make&Buy strategies, however, on the contrary to most recent research we find a positive and significant effects of process innovation associated to Buy strategies. Considering technological, sectoral and firm characteristics, our findings show a clear positive effect of any innovation strategy in the growth of the firm’s workforce. Meanwhile, no innovative strategies negatively affect workforce growth. Our findings contribute by deepening the understanding of the firm level determinants of employment in developing countries. We analyze our result in the light of a recent but extensive evidence on the relationship between innovation and employment at firm’s level in Uruguay. In particular, we discuss the traditional explanation on the firm’s technological behavior in Latin America, to discuss the effects on employment of integrative innovation strategies in Uruguay.

Keywords: innovation strategies; employment; Latin America; Uruguay (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D22 J23 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2020-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-cse, nep-ent, nep-lam, nep-sbm and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12008/24910

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ulr:wpaper:dt-06-20

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) from Instituto de Economía - IECON Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lorenza Pérez ().