Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics

Working Paper Series in Economics and Institutions of Innovation,
Royal Institute of Technology, CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies

No 291: Is innovative firm behavior correlated with age and gender composition of the workforce? Evidence from a new type of data for German enterprises

Christian Pfeifer () and Joachim Wagner ()
Additional contact information
Christian Pfeifer: Leuphana University Lueneburg and IZA, Postal: Leuphana University Lueneburg and IZA, Bonn , Institute of Economics, P.O. Box 2440, D-21314 Lueneburg, Germany
Joachim Wagner: Leuphana University Lueneburg, CESIS, Postal: Leuphana University Lueneburg, CESIS,, Stockholm and IZA, Bonn, Institute of Economics, P.O. Box 2440, D-21314 Lueneburg, Germany

Abstract: This empirical research note documents the relationship between composition of a firm's workforce (with a special focus on age and gender) and its performance with respect to innovative activities (outlays and employment in research and development (R&D)) for a large representative sample of enterprises from manufacturing industries in Germany using unique newly available data. We find that firms with a higher share of older workers have significantly lower proportions of R&D outlays in total revenues and of R&D employment in total employment, whereas firms with a higher share of female employment seem to be more active in R&D.

Keywords: Ageing; firm performance; gender; Germany; innovation; R&D

JEL-codes: D22; D24; J21; J24; L25

14 pages, December 6, 2012

Full text files

cesiswp291.pdf PDF-file 

Download statistics

Questions (including download problems) about the papers in this series should be directed to Vardan Hovsepyan ()
Report other problems with accessing this service to Sune Karlsson ().

This page generated on 2024-02-21 12:08:39.