Workers' skill level and information technology: evidence from German service firms

Martin Falk and Katja Seim

No 99-14, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: This paperanalyses the link between human capitaland information technology(IT ) in the service production process. The analysis is based on 1994 cross-sectional data for 1929 German. Firms drawn from the first wave of the Mannheim Service Innovation Panel (MIP-S). Factor demand functions are used to analyse the determinants of the Firm-specific skillstructure. The empirical evidence indicates that firms with a higher IT investment to sales ratio employ a larger fraction of high-skilled workers. The relationship between IT investment and medium-skilled labour is rather weak while the unskilled labourshare is negatively related to the IT investment to sales ratio. U sing a translog production function to assess the productivity of different input factors, we find that human and informationcapital provide the most powerful contributions to output in the service sector.

Keywords: Information technology; skills; labour demand; service sector (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J23 L8 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:zewdip:5231

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