Boosting productivity via innovation and adoption of new technologies: any role for labor market institutions?

Stefano Scarpetta and Thierry Tressel ()

No 3273, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: The authors present empirical evidence on the determinants of industry-level multifactor productivity growth. They focus on"traditional factors,"including the process of technological catch up, human capital, and research and development (R&D), as well as institutional factors affecting labor adjustment costs. Their analysis is based on harmonized data for 17 manufacturing industries in 18 industrial economies over the past two decades. The disaggregated analysis reveals that the process of technological convergence takes place mainly in low-tech industries, while in high-tech industries, country leaders tend to pull ahead of the others. The link between R&D activity and productivity also depends on technological characteristics of the industries: while there is no evidence of R&D boosting productivity in low-tech industries, the effect is strong in high-tech industries, but the technology leaders tend to enjoy higher returns on R&D expenditure compared with followers. There is also evidence in the data that high labor adjustment costs (proxied by the strictness of employment protection legislation) can have a strong negative impact on productivity. In particular, when institutional settings do not allow wages or internal training to offset high hiring and firing costs, the latter reduce incentives for innovation and adoption of new technologies, and lead to lower productivity performance. Albeit drawn from the experience of industrial countries, this result may have relevant implications for many developing economies characterized by low relative wage flexibility and high labor adjustment costs.

Keywords: Environmental Economics&Policies; Economic Theory&Research; Banks&Banking Reform; Labor Policies; Public Health Promotion; Environmental Economics&Policies; Economic Theory&Research; Banks&Banking Reform; Health Monitoring&Evaluation; Economic Growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-04-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec and nep-ino
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (93)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSC ... ered/PDF/WPS3273.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Boosting productivity via innovation and adoption of new technologies: any role for labor market institutions? (2004)
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:wbk:wbrwps:3273

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Roula I. Yazigi ().