IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/123630.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Employee age structure and firm innovation

Author

Listed:
  • Ilmakunnas, Pekka

Abstract

The age-innovation relationship is studied at the firm level, using ten waves of Finnish innovation surveys linked to register data on firms and their employees. A negative age-innovation relationship exists for a wide range of average employee ages. This is robust to using employee age group shares instead of average age, using fixed effects and continuous treatment effects estimation, and using six different measures of innovative behavior. Employee age diversity is, however, not related to innovativeness.

Suggested Citation

  • Ilmakunnas, Pekka, 2025. "Employee age structure and firm innovation," MPRA Paper 123630, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:123630
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/123630/1/MPRA_paper_123630.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fair, Ray C & Dominguez, Kathryn M, 1991. "Effects of the Changing U.S. Age Distribution on Macroeconomic Equations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(5), pages 1276-1294, December.
    2. Joshua D. Angrist & Jörn-Steffen Pischke, 2009. "Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist's Companion," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 8769.
    3. Mothe, Caroline & Nguyen-Thi, Thuc Uyen, 2021. "Does age diversity boost technological innovation? Exploring the moderating role of HR practices," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 39(6), pages 829-843.
    4. Jenny Meyer, 2011. "Workforce age and technology adoption in small and medium-sized service firms," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 37(3), pages 305-324, October.
    5. Birgit Verworn & Christiane Hipp, 2009. "Does the ageing workforce hamper the innovativeness of firms? (No) evidence from Germany," International Journal of Human Resources Development and Management, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 9(2/3), pages 180-197.
    6. Caroline Mothe & Thuc Uyen Nguyen-Thi, 2021. "Does age diversity boost technological innovation? Exploring the moderating role of HR practices," Post-Print hal-03969462, HAL.
    7. Jisung Park & Seongsu Kim, 2015. "The differentiating effects of workforce aging on exploitative and exploratory innovation: The moderating role of workforce diversity," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 32(2), pages 481-503, June.
    8. Kosuke Imai & David A. van Dyk, 2004. "Causal Inference With General Treatment Regimes: Generalizing the Propensity Score," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 99, pages 854-866, January.
    9. Natarajan Balasubramanian & Jeongsik Lee, 2008. "Firm age and innovation," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 17(5), pages 1019-1047, October.
    10. Marco Cucculelli, 2018. "Firm age and the probability of product innovation. Do CEO tenure and product tenure matter?," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 28(1), pages 153-179, January.
    11. Petri Rouvinen, 2002. "Characteristics of product and process innovators: some evidence from the Finnish innovation survey," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(9), pages 575-580.
    12. Elena Huergo & Jordi Jaumandreu, 2004. "How Does Probability of Innovation Change with Firm Age?," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 22(3_4), pages 193-207, April.
    13. Cui, Victor & Ding, Waverly W. & Yanadori, Yoshio, 2019. "Exploration versus exploitation in technology firms: The role of compensation structure for R&D workforce," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(6), pages 1534-1549.
    14. Koski, Heli, 2015. "Commercial success of innovation: the roles of R&D cooperation and firm age," ETLA Working Papers 30, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Alex Coad, 2018. "Firm age: a survey," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 28(1), pages 13-43, January.
    2. Mammadaliyev, Farid & Gilsing, Victor & Knoben, J., 2024. "How do firms adapt their portfolios of external collaborations to changing internal organizational attributes? The moderating role of firm age," Other publications TiSEM 56c854b7-ed86-4830-843e-c, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    3. Schimke, Antje, 2012. "Entrepreneurial aging and employment growth in the context of extreme growth events," Working Paper Series in Economics 39, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Department of Economics and Management.
    4. Candi, Marina & Kitagawa, Fumi, 2022. "Performance implications of business model centrality over technology-based firms’ life courses," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    5. Schimke, Antje, 2014. "Aging workforce and firm growth in the context of "extreme" employment growth events," Working Paper Series in Economics 54, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Department of Economics and Management.
    6. Shreya Biswas, 2021. "She Innovates- Female owner and firm innovation in India," Papers 2109.09515, arXiv.org.
    7. Paola Cardamone & Valeria Pupo & Fernanda Ricotta, 2014. "Assessing The Impact Of University Technology Transfer On Firms’ Innovation," Working Papers 201403, Università della Calabria, Dipartimento di Economia, Statistica e Finanza "Giovanni Anania" - DESF.
    8. Schimke, Antje, 2014. "Ageing workforce and firm growth in the context of “extreme” employment growth events," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 86-100.
    9. Pascal L. Ghazalian & Ali Fakih, 2017. "R&D and Innovation in Food Processing Firms in Transition Countries," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 68(2), pages 427-450, June.
    10. Ugur, Mehmet & Trushin, Eshref, 2018. "Asymmetric information and heterogeneous effects of R&D subsidies: evidence on R&D investment and employment of R&D personel," Greenwich Papers in Political Economy 21943, University of Greenwich, Greenwich Political Economy Research Centre.
    11. Duncan Chaplin & Arif Mamun & Ali Protik & John Schurrer & Divya Vohra & Kristine Bos & Hannah Burak & Laura Meyer & Anca Dumitrescu & Christopher Ksoll & Thomas Cook, "undated". "Grid Electricity Expansion in Tanzania by MCC: Findings from a Rigorous Impact Evaluation, Final Report," Mathematica Policy Research Reports 144768f69008442e96369195e, Mathematica Policy Research.
    12. Criscuolo, Paola & Nicolaou, Nicos & Salter, Ammon, 2012. "The elixir (or burden) of youth? Exploring differences in innovation between start-ups and established firms," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 319-333.
    13. Marco Grazzi & Daniele Moschella, 2018. "Small, young, and exporters: New evidence on the determinants of firm growth," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 28(1), pages 125-152, January.
    14. Ugur, Mehmet & Trushin, Eshref & Solomon, Edna, 2015. "UK and EU subsidies and private R&D investment: Is there input additionality?," MPRA Paper 68009, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 16 Nov 2015.
    15. Daniela Bragoli & Flavia Cortelezzi & Massimiliano Rigon, 2023. "Firms' innovation and university cooperation. New evidence from a survey of Italian firms," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 1400, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    16. Ohsung Kwon, 2020. "A study on how startups approach sustainable development through intellectual property," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(4), pages 613-625, July.
    17. Jie Jiang & Qihang Zhang & Yifan Hui, 2023. "The Impact of Market and Non-Market-Based Environmental Policy Instruments on Firms’ Sustainable Technological Innovation: Evidence from Chinese Firms," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(5), pages 1-21, March.
    18. Hadid, Wael & Hamdan, Mohammed, 2022. "Firm size and cost system sophistication: The role of firm age," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(2).
    19. Phung, Thuy M.T. & Vermeulen, P.A.M. & Knoben, Joris & Thọ Đạt, Trần, 2018. "Made in Vietnam : The Effects of Internal, Collaborative, and Regional Knowledge Sources of Product Innovation in Vietnamese Firms," Other publications TiSEM b9296264-405c-4575-8893-b, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    20. Magrini, Emiliano & Montalbano, Pierluigi & Nenci, Silvia & Salvatici, Luca, 2014. "Agricultural Trade Policy Distortions and Food Security: Is there a Causal Relationship?," 2014 Third Congress, June 25-27, 2014, Alghero, Italy 173091, Italian Association of Agricultural and Applied Economics (AIEAA).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    innovation; aging; age diversity; R&D;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J11 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Demographic Trends, Macroeconomic Effects, and Forecasts
    • J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure
    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
    • O32 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Management of Technological Innovation and R&D

    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:pra:mprapa:123630. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.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.