Innovación sectorial y empleo -algunas lecturas-

La innovación en la industria y los servicios para generar empleo.

En este texto simplemente presentamos alguna literatura teórica y empírica, que nos ha parecido relevante, sobre el impacto en el empleo de la innovación.

Conocemos algunos hechos. Si la dinámica económica solo consiste en presiones competitivas, entonces se recortan costes, salarios y eventualmente trabajos. En cambio, si los cambios estructurales se acoplan con una demanda dinámica, los trabajos que se pueden perder por el cambio técnico se acaban encontrando en otras partes de la economía. La clave –para ver los efectos netos- es la velocidad a la cual la innovación y difusión tecnológica eliminan trabajos versus el ritmo al que la actividad económica crea nuevos empleos. Por otra parte, el tipo de innovación importa, normalmente la innovación en productos es positiva para el empleo y la de procesos no. Sabemos poco, en cambio sobre el impacto en el empleo de la economía colaborativa que implica innovación en actividades.

La innovación organizativa se asocia con alta intensidad de cambio técnico. De hecho, los cambios técnicos llevan asociados prácticamente siempre cambios organizativos y sobre todo con las TIC. Cambios organizativos que con los cambios técnicos modifican la productividad y el empleo especialmente cuando se trata de TIC. En otros estudios empíricos, con “la empresa” alemana como unidad de análisis, se encuentra que la innovación tanto en producto como en procesos tiene efectos positivos en el empleo y un tanto superiores en el caso de la innovación en procesos. Y también superiores si la innovación en producto ha llevado consigo la generación de patentes. Probablemente, incluir la dinámica, las modificaciones en las competencias y habilidades técnicas y humanas, los efectos de desparrame tanto dentro del propio sector como en otros sectores sean cruciales para determinar los efectos netos finales tanto si la unidad de análisis es el país o región como si lo es la empresa.

Además de analizar la situación de la demanda agregada o, en general, las condiciones, macroeconómicas y el tipo de innovación también es muy importante incluir las interacciones entre la innovación y el comercio, los sistemas nacionales de innovación y las condiciones de los mercados laborales. Estas son, en síntesis, las variables importantes a la hora de estudiar la relación entre la innovación y el empleo.

Sabemos bastante menos sobre cuáles son las variables importantes a la hora de estudiar las relaciones entre la innovación sectorial y el empleo. La primera pregunta sería, incluso, si la innovación sectorial es importante, esto es, si existen diferencias sustanciales entre los sectores económicos a la hora de innovar. Si no existen, pasaríamos a la problemática expresada más arriba pero sabemos con certeza que la innovación varía sustancialmente según los sectores económicos en donde se produzca. Los sectores difieren en términos de su base de conocimiento, de los actores involucrados en la innovación y de sus interconexiones y relaciones y de las instituciones relevantes. De hecho, se construyen sistemas sectoriales de innovación en base a los siguientes bloques: conocimiento, tipología tecnológica, fronteras sectoriales, agentes, relaciones y redes, instituciones, dinámica y transformación de los sistemas sectoriales. Y todo ello porque tiene importantes implicaciones para la política económica.

Pues bien, en estos sistemas sectoriales de innovación falta la relación entre la innovación sectorial y el empleo. Esa pieza en la arquitectura de los sistemas sectoriales de la innovación es la que tendría que profundizarse.

Hemos seleccionado unos cuantos trabajos que permiten profundizar en la temática expuesta, aunque para el caso español no conocemos ningún trabajo que haya establecido información cuantitativa rigurosa sobre la capacidad de la innovación sectorial para generar empleo neto.

Jerome S. Engel (2015) Global Clusters of Innovation: Lessons from Silicon Valley, California Management Review pp.36-65, University of California Press. Can innovation and entrepreneurship stimulate economic growth in diverse communities, or is it only effective in a few unique places like Silicon Valley? This article identifies the salient components, behaviors, and linkages that characterize Silicon Valley and explores how these characteristics apply in a diverse selection of economic communities in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. It focuses on the role institutions—such as governments, universities, major corporations, and NGOs—play in shaping such communities. It provides insights for government policy makers on how to enhance their region's innovation potential, and offers strategies for entrepreneurs and venture investors as to how to leverage the benefits of clusters of innovation, wherever one is located

Heidi Wiig Aslesen, Arne Isaksen (2007) New Perspectives on Knowledge-Intensive Services and Innovation, Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geographypp 45-58, vol 89, Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography, Wiley. Knowledge-intensive services are seen to have an increased importance for learning and innovation activity in a more knowledge-based economy. This paper compares the relevance of two complementary approaches as analytical tools in studying the exchange of knowledge-intensive services in innovation processes. The first approach focuses on the importance of expert knowledge from companies in the KIBS (knowledge-intensive business services) sector as input in innovation processes. The other approach focuses on the role of knowledge-intensive service activities (KISA) in innovation processes. The latter approach regards a wider set of players as potentially important knowledge-intensive service providers thanjust KIBS firms, it focuses on knowledge exchange beyond market relations, and it emphasizes the mix and match of internal and external knowledgeintensive services. This paper analyses the relevance of the two approaches by studying the use of knowledge-intensive services in two Norwegian industries dominated by different knowledge bases, that is, the aquaculture and the software industry, respectively. Empirical studies in the two industries demonstrate that the KISA approach certainly brings new elements into the investigation of the role of knowledge-intensive services in innovation activity. The approach focuses on how knowledge exchange occurs (in static or dynamic ways), and how it relates to firms' own innovation processes. However, innovation studies can also benefit from differentiating more between different types of firms, for example, firms in different phases of their life cycle.},

Giulio Cainelli, Rinaldo Evangelista, Maria Savona,  (2006) Innovation and economic performance in services: a firm-level analysis  Cambridge Journal of Economics3,  vol. 30,  pp 435-458, Oxford University Press. This paper explores the two-way relationship between innovation and economic performance in services using a longitudinal firm-level dataset which matches data from the second Community Innovation Survey, CIS II (1993—95), against a set of economic variables provided by the System of Enterprise Accounts (1993—98). The results presented show that innovation is positively affected by past economic performance and that innovation activities (especially investments in ICTs) have a positive impact on both growth and productivity. Furthermore, productivity and innovation act as a self-reinforcing mechanism, which further boosts economic performance. These findings provide empirical support for the endogenous nature of innovation in services and the presence in this sector of competition models and selection mechanisms based on innovation.

Stefan Lachenmaier, Horst Rottmann (2007)   Employment Effects of Innovation at the Firm Level  Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik / Journal of Economics and Statistics 3Vol. 227, pp. 254-272 Lucius & Lucius Verlagsgesellschaft mbH. This paper analyzes empirically the effects of innovation on employment at the firm level using a uniquely long panel dataset of German manufacturing firms. The overall effect of innovations on employment often remains unclear in theoretical contributions due to reverse effects. We distinguish between product and process innovations and additionally introduce different innovation categories. We find clearly positive effects for product and process innovations on employment growth with the effects for process innovations being slightly higher. For product innovations that involved patent applications we can identify an additional positive effect on employment.

Bart van Ark, Robert Inklaar, Robert H. McGuckin, Marcel P. Timmer (2003) The Employment Effects of the 'New Economy'. a Comparison of the European Union and the United States   National Institute Economic Review 184 pp. 86-98,  Sage Publications, Ltd. This paper provides an analysis of the trends in labour productivity and employment growth at industry level in the European Union and the United States during the 1990s. We analyse relationships for groups of industries, i.e. industries that produce ICT products and services, those that invest strongly in ICT, and those that make less intensive use of ICT. The main findings are that the inverse relationship between employment and productivity growth has been much more prominent in manufacturing industries than in services industries. Secondly, during the 1990s, this relationship has turned positive in many industries, in particular in ICT-producing industries and in ICT-using industries in the service sector. Finally, the employment-reducing effects of productivity growth have remained considerably stronger in Europe than in the US.

César Alonso-Borrego, M. Dolores Collado (2002) Innovation and Job Creation and Destruction: Evidence from Spain. Recherches Économiques de Louvain / Louvain Economic Review, vol. 68, pp.149-168, Department of Economics, Université Catholique de Louvain, Cambridge University Press. In this paper we examine the effect of innovation on job creation and job destruction in Spanish manufacturing. Our empirical analysis is based on firm-level longitudinal data from which we have information on employment and innovation activity. The estimation approach consists of a two-step procedure that takes into account the fact that firms endogenously choose positive, negative or zero growth in employment, in which the selection mechanism is an ordered probit. Our results point out the importance of innovation variables on employment growth: innovative firms create more jobs -and destroy fewer- than non-innovative, and the degree of technological effort has a strong positive effect on net employment creation.

Martin Andersson, Florian Noseleit(2011) Start-ups and employment dynamics within and across sectors  Small Business Economics 4vol 36 pp. 461-483, Springer.  We use a decade of longitudinal data on start-ups and employment in Swedish regions to analyze the effect of start-ups on subsequent employment growth. We extend previous analyses by decomposing the effect of start-ups on total employment change into within-and cross-sector effects. We find that start-ups in a sector influence employment change in the same as well as in other sectors. The results illustrate that the known S-shaped pattern can be attributed to the different effects of start-ups in a sector on employment change in the same sector and in others. Start-ups in a sector have a positive impact on employment change in the same sector. The effects on employment change in other sectors may be negative or positive, and depend on the sector under consideration. In particular, start-ups in high end services deviate from manufacturing and low-end services in that they have significant negative impacts on employment change in other sectors. The findings are consistent with the idea that start-ups are a vehicle for change in the composition of regional industry.

KNUT BLIND, ANDRE JUNGMITTAG(2004) Foreign Direct Investment, Imports and Innovations in the Service Industry Review of Industrial Organization 2vol. 25, pp. 205-227,  Springer.  The paper analyses for the first time empirically the impact of foreign competition due to inward foreign direct investment and imports on the innovation activities using data of German service firms. Based on the hypothesis that foreign competition has a disciplining effect on domestic markets derived from the manufacturing sector, a positive impact can be expected on innovation in the service sector, while other theoretical considerations do not absolutely support this optimistic view. In the empirical analysis, variants of two probit models are estimated for a sample of 2,019 service firms to explain their product and process innovation activities. The results show that both foreign direct investment and imports have highly significant positive effects on product and process innovations. Vice versa, the export and foreign production activities of domestic firms support innovations, too.

Isabelle Berrebi-Hoffmann, Damian Grimshaw, Michel Lallement, Marcela Miozzo (2010) Employment challenges to the knowledge economy in Europe: the case of IT services,  Work Organisation, Labour & Globalisation 1 vol. 4, pages 84-103,  Pluto Journals. This paper investigates the employment challenges facing the fast-expanding IT services sector in Europe and contributes to debates about what policy reforms are required to nurture the so-called knowledge economy. The IT services sector is highly internationalised and strongly concentrated in all the four countries examined - Austria, France, Germany, and the UK. Nevertheless, policy reform is unlikely to follow a universal route, since the development of IT services has been strongly shaped by its interaction with each country's specific national employment model. The article investigates three employment challenges, namely the country system of skill formation, forms of collective employee and employer representation, and patterns of worker mobility and use of non-standard employment contracts. While important, national employment models do not determine the character of the sector and the paper identifies several points of tension and contradiction that raise questions about the future sustainability of knowledge economy sectors.

Stefan Lachenmaier, Horst Rottmann (2007)   Employment Effects of Innovation at the Firm Level  Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik / Journal of Economics and Statistics 3Vol. 227, pp. 254-272 Lucius & Lucius Verlagsgesellschaft mbH. We find clearly positive effects for product and process innovations on employment growth with the effects for process innovations being slightly higher. For product innovations that involved patent applications we can identify an additional positive effect on employment.