Age and productivity: evidence from linked employer employee data

Christian Göbel and Thomas Zwick

No 09-020, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: ageing workforce; age; productivity; LEED; system GMM (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J11 J14 J21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age and nep-eff
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (80)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:zewdip:09020

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