IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/ecinnt/v5y1998i2-4p273-300.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Employment And Mobility Of Workers In Industries With Different Intensity Of Innovation: Evidence On Italy From A Panel Of Workers And Firms

Author

Listed:
  • Lia Pacelli
  • Fabio Rapiti
  • Rlccardo Revelli

Abstract

In this paper a panel of workers and firms is used to investigate employment composition and dynamics in industries which differ by innovation intensity. To define the latter industry-wide statistics were used (for a subset of 2,800 firms, individual data on R&D expenditures and investments in innovative processes were available from a survey on manufacturing). Firms and workers are observed over the period 1985-1991. The paper document an high rate of labour turnover. Annual separation rates are high in all size-classes, but they decline from 50% in small firms (less than 20 employees) to 13% in large ones (with more than 1,000 employees). Separations are inversely related to an industry's innovative intensity (from 18% in the highly innovative industries to 31% in the traditional industries). A logit model, which controlled for the characteristics of workers and firms, showed that the probability of separation is higher among manual and young workers and decreases monotonically with the firm size. The probability of separation declines as job tenure and, perhaps more importantly, the individual's wage increases. After controlling for these factors, the evidence suggests that the highest probability of separation is in traditional industries, the lowest is in the more innovative industries. The result is strengthened when firm-level data on R&D and other innovative expenditures are used. Other things being equal, firms that invest in R&D have a more stable labour force, and firms that invest in non-innovative processes have a less stable labour force. We therefore find empirical evidence to support the hypothesis that more innovative firms cultivate more durable employer-employee relationships. The fraction of job-to-job moves (with no intervening period of unemployment) on total separations qualifies the turnover of workers. Controlling for firm size, the percentage of job-to-job moves increases fairly regularly with worker's skills and with the industry's innovative intensity. Thus the innovative intensity of he industry appears to have a positive effect on the share of job-to-job moves, while there is some evidence that it lowers the chances of separation. This result may be linked to the skills and specialisations of the workforce; it is certainly related to the higher demand for labour in the High Tech Sectors (where employment is growing) relative to the less innovative sectors.

Suggested Citation

  • Lia Pacelli & Fabio Rapiti & Rlccardo Revelli, 1998. "Employment And Mobility Of Workers In Industries With Different Intensity Of Innovation: Evidence On Italy From A Panel Of Workers And Firms," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 5(2-4), pages 273-300.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:ecinnt:v:5:y:1998:i:2-4:p:273-300
    DOI: 10.1080/10438599800000008
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10438599800000008
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/10438599800000008?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Stefano Breschi & Camilla Lenzi, 2010. "Spatial patterns of inventors' mobility: Evidence on US urban areas," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 89(2), pages 235-250, June.
    2. Lia Pacelli, 2002. "Fixed Term Contracts, Social Security Rebates and Labour Demand in Italy," LABORatorio R. Revelli Working Papers Series 7, LABORatorio R. Revelli, Centre for Employment Studies.
    3. Castro Silva, Hugo & Lima, Francisco, 2017. "Technology, employment and skills: A look into job duration," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(8), pages 1519-1530.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:ecinnt:v:5:y:1998:i:2-4:p:273-300. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/GEIN20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.