Technological and organisational change and its effects on employment : a micro-econometric analysis based on the Linked IAB Panel

Abstract

"Over the past few years the situation on the international labour markets has changed dramatically. While countries such as the United States or Great Britain are being affected by increasing wage differentials, the unemployment figures in most continental European countries are on the rise. In this context, reference is often made to a growth in international trade and a technological progress that is gaining momentum. An alternative explanation is seen in the organisational changes taking place within businesses. The aim of this paper is to examine the effects that such technological and organizational changes have on employment at different qualification levels. To do this, the IAB Linked Employer-Employee dataset for Germany is used, which provides information on individual enterprises as well as detailed information on their employment structures. Starting out from a generalised Leontief cost function, factor demand functions for employees with high, medium and low qualification levels are derived. As it cannot be assumed that the company-internal decision to introduce innovations and organizational changes is an exogenous one, a mixed simultaneous multi-equation model is estimated for the econometric specification, as this models the endogeneity explicitly. From the estimated parameters, a number of individual and cross-price elasticities between the different levels of skills are calculated. The results obtained support the hypothesis of a 'skill biased technological change' only weakly. However, organizational changes make low-skilled employees redundant while highly-qualified employees are not affected by them. Another finding is the close interdependency between innovations and organizational changes." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

Cite article

Bellmann, L., Caliendo, M., Hujer, R. & Radic, D. (2002): Beschäftigungswirkungen technisch-organisatorischen Wandels. Eine mikroökonometrische Analyse mit dem Linked IAB-Panel. In: Mitteilungen aus der Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung, Vol. 35, No. 4, p. 506-522.