IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp6909.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Aging and Productivity: Evidence from Piece Rates

Author

Listed:
  • Pekkarinen, Tuomas

    (VATT, Helsinki)

  • Uusitalo, Roope

    (University of Helsinki)

Abstract

We evaluate the effects of aging on productivity using piece-rate earnings as a proxy for worker output. Our data contain the population of Finnish blue collar workers in 61 different industries during 1990-2002. A unique feature of the data is that we can observe the exact hours worked on piece rates and on fixed time rates as well as earnings under both performance schemes. We account for the selection into piece rates by using firm-level changes in pay systems as instruments for the probability of working on piece rates. A subset of workers also receive both piece rates and time rates within the same quarter. For these workers, we can directly compare the age profile of hourly earnings under piece rates and fixed rates. The results indicate that productivity increases with age until age 40 after which it stays roughly constant. Wage growth is faster than productivity growth for young workers but after age 40 both wages and productivity grow approximately at the same rate.

Suggested Citation

  • Pekkarinen, Tuomas & Uusitalo, Roope, 2012. "Aging and Productivity: Evidence from Piece Rates," IZA Discussion Papers 6909, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6909
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp6909.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bruce A. Weinberg & David W. Galenson, 2019. "Creative Careers: The Life Cycles of Nobel Laureates in Economics," De Economist, Springer, vol. 167(3), pages 221-239, September.
    2. Benoit Dostie, 2011. "Wages, Productivity and Aging," De Economist, Springer, vol. 159(2), pages 139-158, June.
    3. James L. Medoff & Katharine G. Abraham, 1981. "Are Those Paid More Really More Productive? The Case of Experience," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 16(2), pages 186-216.
    4. Jan Ours, 2009. "Will You Still Need Me: When I’m 64?," De Economist, Springer, vol. 157(4), pages 441-460, December.
    5. Lazear, Edward P, 1986. "Salaries and Piece Rates," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(3), pages 405-431, July.
    6. Wooldridge, Jeffrey M., 1995. "Selection corrections for panel data models under conditional mean independence assumptions," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 115-132, July.
    7. Edward P. Lazear, 2000. "Performance Pay and Productivity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(5), pages 1346-1361, December.
    8. David W. Galenson & Robert Jensen, 2001. "Young Geniuses and Old Masters: The Life Cycles of Great Artists from Masaccio to Jasper Johns," NBER Working Papers 8368, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Tuomas Pekkarinen & Chris Riddell, 2008. "Performance Pay and Earnings: Evidence from Personnel Records," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 61(3), pages 297-319, April.
    10. James L. Medoff & Katharine G. Abraham, 1980. "Experience, Performance, and Earnings," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 95(4), pages 703-736.
    11. Fair, Ray C, 1994. "How Fast Do Old Men Slow Down?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 76(1), pages 103-118, February.
    12. James Feyrer, 2007. "Demographics and Productivity," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 89(1), pages 100-109, February.
    13. Hellerstein, Judith K & Neumark, David & Troske, Kenneth R, 1999. "Wages, Productivity, and Worker Characteristics: Evidence from Plant-Level Production Functions and Wage Equations," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 17(3), pages 409-446, July.
    14. Flabbi, Luca & Ichino, Andrea, 2001. "Productivity, seniority and wages: new evidence from personnel data," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 359-387, June.
    15. Bruno Crépon & Nicolas Deniau & Sébastien Pérez-Duarte, 2003. "Wages, Productivity and Worker Characteristics : A French Perspective," Working Papers 2003-04, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    16. Olsen, Randall J, 1980. "A Least Squares Correction for Selectivity Bias," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(7), pages 1815-1820, November.
    17. Jianmin Tang & Carolyn MacLeod, 2006. "Labour force ageing and productivity performance in Canada," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 39(2), pages 582-603, May.
    18. Pekka Ilmakunnas & Mika Maliranta, 2002. "Labour characteristics and wage-productivity gaps," New Zealand Economic Papers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(1), pages 73-74.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Lee, R., 2016. "Macroeconomics, Aging, and Growth," Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, in: Piggott, John & Woodland, Alan (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 59-118, Elsevier.
    2. Bertoni, Marco & Brunello, Giorgio & Rocco, Lorenzo, 2015. "Selection and the age – productivity profile. Evidence from chess players," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 45-58.
    3. Karsten Wasiluk, 2014. "Technology Adoption and Demographic Change," Working Paper Series of the Department of Economics, University of Konstanz 2014-05, Department of Economics, University of Konstanz.
    4. Christine Mayrhuber & Silvia Rocha-Akis, 2013. "Anreizsysteme zur Weiterbeschäftigung älterer Arbeitnehmerinnen und Arbeitnehmer," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 46905.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Paul Hek & Daniel Vuuren, 2011. "Are older workers overpaid? A literature review," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 18(4), pages 436-460, August.
    2. Börsch-Supan, Axel & Weiss, Matthias, 2016. "Productivity and age: Evidence from work teams at the assembly line," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 7(C), pages 30-42.
    3. Castellucci, Fabrizio & Padula, Mario & Pica, Giovanni, 2011. "The age-productivity gradient: Evidence from a sample of F1 drivers," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(4), pages 464-473, August.
    4. Daniel Vuuren, 2014. "Flexible Retirement," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(3), pages 573-593, July.
    5. Michael Waldman, 2012. "Theory and Evidence in Internal LaborMarkets [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    6. Frederiksen, Anders & Lange, Fabian & Kriechel, Ben, 2017. "Subjective performance evaluations and employee careers," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 408-429.
    7. Bernhard Mahlberg & Inga Freund & Alexia Prskawetz, 2013. "Ageing, productivity and wages in Austria: sector level evidence," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 40(4), pages 561-584, November.
    8. Dohmen, Thomas J., 2004. "Performance, seniority, and wages: formal salary systems and individual earnings profiles," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(6), pages 741-763, December.
    9. Ana Cardoso & Paulo Guimarães & José Varejão, 2011. "Are Older Workers Worthy of Their Pay? An Empirical Investigation of Age-Productivity and Age-Wage Nexuses," De Economist, Springer, vol. 159(2), pages 95-111, June.
    10. Katharina Frosch, 2009. "Do only new brooms sweep clean? A review on workforce age and innovation," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2009-005, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    11. Mahlberg, Bernhard & Freund, Inga & Crespo Cuaresma, Jesús & Prskawetz, Alexia, 2013. "Ageing, productivity and wages in Austria," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(C), pages 5-15.
    12. Vegard Skirbekk, 2004. "Age and Individual Productivity: A Literature Survey," Vienna Yearbook of Population Research, Vienna Institute of Demography (VID) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, vol. 2(1), pages 133-154.
    13. Konstantins Benkovskis & Olegs Tkacevs, 2019. "Getting Old Is No Picnic? Sector-Specific Relationship Between Workers Age and Firm Productivity," Discussion Papers 2019/03, Latvijas Banka.
    14. Serneels, Pieter, 2008. "Human capital revisited: The role of experience and education when controlling for performance and cognitive skills," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(6), pages 1143-1161, December.
    15. van Ours, Jan C. & Stoeldraijer, Lenny, 2010. "Age, wage and productivity," CEPR Discussion Papers 7713, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    16. Bertoni, Marco & Brunello, Giorgio & Rocco, Lorenzo, 2015. "Selection and the age – productivity profile. Evidence from chess players," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 45-58.
    17. Paulina Broniatowska & Aleksandra Majchrowska & Maciej Nasiński, 2020. "Age Structure of Employment and Wages. An Analysis Across Occupational Groups," Central European Journal of Economic Modelling and Econometrics, Central European Journal of Economic Modelling and Econometrics, vol. 12(3), pages 227-250, September.
    18. Alberto Bayo-Moriones & Jose E. Galdon-Sanchez & Maia Güell, 2010. "Is seniority-based pay used as a motivational device? Evidence from plant-level data," Research in Labor Economics, in: Jobs, Training, and Worker Well-being, pages 155-187, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    19. Hans Gersbach & Amihai Glazer, 2009. "High Compensation Creates a Ratchet Effect," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(539), pages 1208-1224, July.
    20. Benoit Dostie, 2011. "Wages, Productivity and Aging," De Economist, Springer, vol. 159(2), pages 139-158, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    piece rates; productivity; aging;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J33 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Compensation Packages; Payment Methods

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:iza:izadps:dp6909. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    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.