Who benefits from training and R&D: The firm or the workers? A study on panels of French and Swedish firms

The present paper offers a novel study of the effects of intangible assets on wages and productivity. Training, R&D, and physical capital are all taken into account, and their joint effects examined. We use panels of firms in order to control for unobserved fixed effects and the potential endogeneity of training and R&D, and have been able to obtain data for two different countries, France and Sweden, in order to explore the effects of institutional or national specificity. The estimation of productivity and wage equations allows us to show how the benefits of investment in physical capital, R&D and training are shared between the firm and the workers. Although the workers obtain significant benefits, the study shows that the firm obtains the largest return on the investments it makes. This is true not only for physical capital and R&D, but also for training. It suggests that firms can rationally invest in training and that the issue of under-investment in training should be re-examined.Training, R&D, productivity, wages

Basic Wages and Firm Characteristics: Rent-sharing in Frensh Manufacturing

This paper shows that firm profits (and losses) are strongly related to individual hourly basic wages for most employees, as well as to the total earnings measures that have been used previously but are correlated with working time. Capital intensity is independently important without reducing the significance of profits as in other studies. Our estimated basic wage-profit elasticity of one to two percent in the presence of numerous individual and firm controls is of similar magnitude to the female collective bargain premium and the firm size-wage effect, and these effects are much smaller than previous estimates without firm-specific controls

Formation continue, recherche et développement et performance des entreprises

Gérard Ballot, Fathi Fakhfakh und Erol Taymaz, Berufliche Weiterbildung, Forschung und Entwicklung sowie. Leistungsfähigkeit der Unternehmen. Im vorliegenden Beitrag werden die Auswirkungen einiger immaterieller Vermögen auf die betriebliche Produktivität untersucht. Während viele der bisherigen Untersuchungen die Rolle des von Forschung und Entwicklung (FuE) gemessenen Kapitals des Know-how hervorgehoben haben, wurde der komplementären betrieblichen Weiterbildung bislang kaum Rechnung getragen, zumindest wurde diese nicht quantitativ untersucht. Die Originalität der vorliegenden Untersuchung besteht darin, dass sie versucht, diese beiden Typen immateriellen Vermögens sowie die möglichen Interaktionen zwischen ihnen abzuschätzen. Ein weiterer Beitrag besteht darin, die Auswirkung dieser Aktiva auf den Gesamtzuwachs der Produktionsfaktoren zu analysieren, so wie sie nach der endogenen Wachstumstheorie - auf makroökonomischer Ebene vorkommen, aber auch auf betrieblicher Ebene vorhanden sein können. Datenbasis dieser Untersuchung ist ein von der Forschungsgruppe Arbeitsmârkte, Beschaftigung und Simulation (ERMES) erstelltes von human resource- und Sozialbilanzen ausgehendes Panel der grossen franzôsischen Unternehmen (1981-1993). Die Studie macht deutlich, dass das Weiterbildungs-Kapital ebenso wie das FuE-Kapital Produktionsfaktoren darstellen, deren Ertragsraten vom Standpunkt der Produktivität aus gesehen sehr hoch sind. Zudem beeinflusst FuE den Zuwachs des Mehrwertes. Mögliche Interaktionen lassen sich nicht festmachen. Letztlich untersuchen die Autoren dieses Beitrags den Einfluss einiger Organisations variablen auf die Wirksamkeit der Weiterbildung und decken die negative Wirkung des Absentismus auf.Gérard Ballot, Fathi Fakhfakh, Erol Taymaz, Continuing vocational training, Research and Development and company productivity. In this paper, the effects of some companies' intangible assets on their productivity are examined. Although many studies have shown the importance of the technological capital, as measured in terms of Research and Development, little attention has been paid so far to the role of on-the-job vocational training, at least from the quantitative point of view. This study is therefore based on a new approach, consisting of assessing the respective importance of both types of intangible assets and their possible interactions. It is also proposed to analyse how having stocks of these assets may actually affect a firm's total factor productivity growth, as suggested in principle by the macroeconomic theory of endogenous growth. The data used in this study, which were drawn up by the ERMES Research Group on markets, employment and simulation on the basis of the human resources accounts and the social accounts of a panel of large French firms (1981-1993), show that the vocational training capital and the Research and Development capital are both productive factors. Both factors give very high rates of return in terms of productivity. Research and Development furthermore increases the value added. No interactions were found to occur, however, between the two factors. Lastly, the effects of some organizational variables on the usefulness of vocational training were investigated, and absenteeism was found to have negative effects.L'article étudie les effets de certains actifs immatériels de l'entreprise sur sa productivité. Alors que beaucoup de travaux ont mis en évidence le rôle du capital technologique, mesuré par la Recherche et développement, le rôle complémentaire de la formation de la main-d'œuvre par l'entreprise n'a guère été étudié, du moins de manière quantitative. L'originalité de l'étude est d'abord d'évaluer les impacts respectifs de ces deux types d'actifs immatériels, et leurs possibles interactions. Un autre apport est d'analyser les effets des stocks de ces actifs sur la croissance de la productivité globale des facteurs, effets suggérés par la théorie de la croissance endogène au niveau macroéconomique, mais susceptibles d'exister au niveau de l'entreprise. L'étude utilise des données tirées d'un panel de grandes entreprises françaises (1981-1993) constitué par l'Équipe de recherche sur les marchés, l'emploi et la simulation (ERMES) à partir des bilans sociaux ainsi que des bilans fiscaux, et montre que le capital-Formation continue comme le capital-Recherche et développement sont des facteurs de production. Leurs taux de rendement sont très élevés en termes de productivité. La Recherche et développement a de plus un effet sur la croissance de la valeur ajoutée. Par contre les interactions n'apparaissent pas. Enfin l'article étudie l'impact de certaines variables organisationnelles sur l'efficacité de la formation et repère un effet négatif de l'absentéisme.Ballot Gérard, Fakhfakh Fathi, Taymaz Erol. Formation continue, recherche et développement et performance des entreprises. In: Formation Emploi. N.64, 1998. pp. 43-58

Productivity, Capital and Labor in Labor-Managed and Conventional Firms

Despite a continuing interest in the compared efficiency of labor-managed and conventional firms, only a handful of comparative empirical studies exist. These studies suggest that labor-managed firms have the same productivity levels as conventional ones, but organize production differently. However, the data used in these studies cover a single industry, or firms matched by industry and size in manufacturing, and concern a few dozen firms. In addition, the use of constant-elasticity production functions in past studies has made it difficult to distinguish the effects of incentives embodied in the factors of production from those of scale differences that could be caused by the differences in factor demand behavior between conventional and labor-managed firms hypothesized by economic theory. The paper compares the productivity of labor-managed and conventional firms using two new panel data sets covering several thousand firms from France, including representative samples of conventional firms and all worker cooperatives with 20 employees or more in manufacturing and services. We present Generalized Least Squares (GLS) and Generalized Moments Method (GMM) estimations of translog production functions industry by industry for cooperative and conventional firms and test for the equality of their total factor productivities. We also allow systematic differences in scale and technology to be determined by the ownership form. The translog specification, which allows returns to scale to vary with input levels, makes it possible to disentangle embodied incentive effects from systematic differences in scale due to underinvestment in labor-managed firms. In the process, we also propose updated "stylized facts" about labor-managed firms in comparison with conventional firms. Our production function estimates suggest that cooperatives are at least as productive as conventional firms. However, the two types of firms organize production differently. Cooperatives are more X-efficient, i.e., they use their capital and labour more effectively, than conventional firms. With their current levels of inputs, cooperatives produce at least as much with the technology they have chosen as they would if they were using conventional firms' technology. In contrast, in several industries conventional firms would produce more with their current inputs if they were organizing production as cooperatives do. In all industries and in both data sets, both types of firms would produce at constant or decreasing returns to scale if they were using the same technology at their current input levels, and we find no evidence that returns to scale are systematically higher in cooperatives. Contrary to received wisdom, descriptive statistics indicate that workers' cooperatives are not always smaller or less capitalized than conventional firms, and grow at least as fast as conventional firms in all the industries studied

Who Benefits from Training and R&D, the Firm or the Workers?

The present paper offers a novel study of the effects of intangible assets on wages and productivity. Training, R&D and physical capital are all taken into account, and their joint effects are examined. We use panels of firms in order to control for unobserved fixed effects and the potential endogeneity of training and R&D, using data for France and Sweden. The estimation of productivity and wage equations allows us to show how the benefits of investment in physical capital, training and R&D are shared between the firm and the workers. We found that firms indeed obtain the largest part of the returns to their investments, but their share is relatively lower for intangible assets (R&D and training) than for physical capital. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2006.

Youth ! ... How did you find your job ?

French youth suffer from a high level of unemployment. Despite a large number of public policies, youth employability remains at a critical level. This article emphasizes the role of networks in getting a job, while distinguishing between school networks and social/professional networks, and this a novelty of this study. We postulate that workers use networks differently depending mainly on their individual and their socio-spatial characteristics. The empirical analysis shows that more than 30% of young people find a job thanks to their social or school network. School networks help better-educated people, whereas social networks are more fruitful for the less well-educated. Being a woman or having non-French parents reduce the probability of finding a job through social or school networks. Finally, people living in sensitive urban areas are more affected by unemployment, and they are more likely to find a job through school networks, public agencies or competitive exams. Thus, networks help in finding a job, but to different extents depending on education, origin, gender or place of residence