TY - JOUR AU - Hall,Bronwyn H. AU - Lotti,Francesca AU - Mairesse,Jacques TI - Employment, Innovation, and Productivity: Evidence from Italian Microdata JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 13296 PY - 2007 Y2 - August 2007 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13296 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13296.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Bronwyn H. Hall Dept. of Economics 549 Evans Hall UC Berkeley Berkeley, CA 94720-3880 Tel: 510/642-3878 Fax: 510/548-5561 E-Mail: bhhall@nber.org Francesca Lotti Structural Economic Analysis Department Bank of Italy via Nazionale 91, 00184 Rome (IT) E-Mail: francesca.lotti@gmail.com Jacques Mairesse CREST-INSEE 15, Boulevard Gabriel PERI 92245 MALAKOFF CEDEX FRANCE Tel: 33-1-41-17-35-50 Fax: 33-1-41-17-76-34 E-Mail: mairesse@ensae.fr AB - Italian manufacturing firms have been losing ground with respect to many of their European competitors. This paper presents some empirical evidence on the effects of innovation on employment growth and therefore on firms' productivity with the goal of understanding the roots of such poor performance. We use firm level data from the last three surveys on Italian manufacturing firms conducted by Mediocredito-Capitalia, which cover the period 1995-2003. Using a slightly modified version of the model proposed by Harrison, Jaumandreu, Mairesse and Peters (HJMP 2005), which separates employment growth rates into those associated with old and new products, we find no evidence of significant employment displacement effects stemming from process innovation. The sources of employment growth during the period are split equally between the net contribution of product innovation and the net contribution from sales growth of old products. However, the contribution of product innovation to employment growth is somewhat lower than in the four European countries considered in HJMP 2005, and the contribution of innovation in general to productivity growth is almost nil in Italy during this period. ER -