TY - JOUR AU - Barth,Erling AU - Davis,James C. AU - Freeman,Richard B. AU - Wang,Andrew J. TI - The Effects of Scientists and Engineers on Productivity and Earnings at the Establishment Where They Work JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 23484 PY - 2017 Y2 - June 2017 DO - 10.3386/w23484 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w23484 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w23484.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Erling Barth Institute for Social Research P.O. Box 3233 Elisenberg 0208 Oslo Norway Tel: +(47) 23 08 61 43 E-Mail: erling.barth@samfunnsforskning.no James Davis Boston Census Research Data Center National Bureau of Economic Research 1050 Massachusetts Ave. Cambridge, MA 02138 Tel: 617-613-1215 Fax: 617-613-1248 E-Mail: james.c.davis@census.gov Richard B. Freeman NBER 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 Tel: 617/868-3900 Fax: 617/868-2742 E-Mail: freeman@nber.org Andrew J. Wang National Bureau of Economic Research 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 E-Mail: awang@nber.org M1 - published as Erling Barth, James C. Davis, Richard B. Freeman, Andrew J. Wang. "The Effects of Scientists and Engineers on Productivity and Earnings at the Establishment Where They Work," in Richard B. Freeman and Hal Salzman, editors, "U.S. Engineering in a Global Economy" University of Chicago Press (2017) M2 - featured in NBER digest on 2017-08-23 M3 - presented at "U.S. Engineering in the Global Economy", September 26-27, 2011 AB - This paper uses linked establishment-firm-employee data to examine the relationship between the scientists and engineers proportion (SEP) of employment, and productivity and labor earnings. We show that: (1) most scientists and engineers in industry are employed in establishments producing goods or services, and do not perform research and development (R&D); (2) productivity is higher in manufacturing establishments with higher SEP, and increases with increases in SEP; (3) employee earnings are higher in manufacturing establishments with higher SEP, and increase substantially for employees who move to establishments with higher SEP, but only modestly for employees within an establishment when SEP increases in the establishment. The results suggest that the work of scientists and engineers in goods and services producing establishments is an important pathway for increasing productivity and earnings, separate and distinct from the work of scientists and engineers who perform R&D. ER -