Dipartimento di Economia e Statistica "Cognetti de Martiis"

Descrizione del progetto

This research project aims at advancing our knowledge of the relationship between innovation and labor market dynamics, elaborating on the extant theoretical and empirical literature in two main novel directions.

Strand A

Labor market and innovation While most of the of the previous literature has approached this relationship by looking at the impact of innovation on employment and skills, one of the novelties of this project is reversing the main research question and investigating whether labor market characteristics - such as wage dynamics, nature of the labor contracts, skill endowment and short- and long-term labor mobility - may affect the propensity to innovate at the firm, sectoral and regional level. Moreover, the interplay between regional labor markets and both agglomeration economies and knowledge spillovers will be investigated as the second main strand of research (see below). In strand A three key dimensions will be investigated, namely: 1) Skill endowment as driver of innovation; 2) Labor market institutions and dynamics as drivers (obstacles) to innovation; 3) Long-term and short-term mobility as drivers (obstacles) to innovation.

Strand B

Technological externalities and regional specialization patterns: the impact on employment and wages While an important strand of the extant literature has dealt with the geographical underpinnings of individual wages and labor dynamics, stressing the importance of urban and industrial agglomeration, no attention has been paid so far to the labor market impacts of technological externalities and patterns of regional technological specialization and diversification. To fill this gap, we articulate a framework able to investigate the effects of knowledge spillovers on individual wages. In doing so, we extend the scope of the analysis by appreciating the differential impact of Marshall vis-à-vis Jacobs’ externalities. We will further elaborate theoretical and empirical strategies to study the extent to which other dimensions of regional innovation efforts may bear significant effects on local wages and employment dynamics. The analyses will rely on Industrial Organization (IO) and evolutionary theories, paying particular attention to firm, sectoral and regional heterogeneity. However, the bulk of the project will be on the applied side and, in order to carry out our empirical analyses, we will integrate data from different sources at the sectoral, firm and regional level. In terms of the adopted methodology, the project will rely on the most advanced statistical and econometric tools, including dynamic panel regressions and topic models based on big data.