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Pré-Publication, Document De Travail Année : 2021

Techies, Trade and Skill-Biased Productivity

Résumé

We study the impact of firm level choices of ICT, R&D, exporting and importing on the evolution of productivity, its bias towards skilled workers, and the implications for labor demand. We use a novel measure of firm-level technology: firms' employment of workers in occupations related to R&D and ICT adoption, who we call “techies”. We develop a methodology for estimating nested CES production functions at the firm level, which allows us to measure both Hicks-neutral and skill-augmenting technology differences. Using administrative data on French firms we find that techies, exporting and importing raise skill-biased productivity. In contrast, only ICT techies raise Hicks-neutral productivity. On average, higher firm-level skill biased productivity does not affect low-skill employment even as it raises the ratio of skilled to unskilled workers, due to the cost-reducing effect of higher productivity. ICT techies account for large increases in aggregate demand for skill, mostly due to their effect on firm size, less so through within-firm changes. Exporting, importing, and R&D techies have smaller aggregate effects.
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Dates et versions

hal-03411543 , version 1 (02-11-2021)

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  • HAL Id : hal-03411543 , version 1

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James Harrigan, Ariell Reshef, Farid Toubal. Techies, Trade and Skill-Biased Productivity. 2021. ⟨hal-03411543⟩

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