Is flexible labour good for innovation? Evidence from firm-level data

Alfred Kleinknecht, Flore N. van Schaik and Haibo Zhou

Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2014, vol. 38, issue 5, 1207-1219

Abstract: Whether the use of flexible workers is damaging to innovation or not depends on the dominant innovation regime in a sector. In sectors with a ‘routinised’ innovation regime, high shares of low-paid temporary workers have a negative impact on the probability that firms invest in R&D. In sectors that tend towards a ‘garage business’ regime, however, flexibility has no impact. The two innovation regimes differ in the nature of their knowledge base: reliance on generally available knowledge or dependence on a firm’s historically accumulated knowledge base. Innovation in the latter regime benefits from longer job durations. Our results are consistent with findings in macro-level studies that coordinated market economies with rigid labour markets have higher labour productivity gains than liberalised market economies.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (65)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/cje/bet077 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:oup:cambje:v:38:y:2014:i:5:p:1207-1219.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Cambridge Journal of Economics is currently edited by Jacqui Lagrue

More articles in Cambridge Journal of Economics from Cambridge Political Economy Society Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().