Do Older Workers Lower IT-Enabled Productivity? Firm-Level Evidence from Germany

26 Pages Posted: 17 Apr 2009

See all articles by Irene Bertschek

Irene Bertschek

ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Jenny Meyer

ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Date Written: 2008

Abstract

The paper provides empirical evidence for the question whether firms' ITenabled labour productivity is affected by the age structure of the workforce. We apply a production function approach with heterogenous labour to firmlevel data from German manufacturing and services industries. We find that workers older than 49 are not significantly less productive than prime age workers, whereas workers younger than 30 are significantly less productive than prime age workers. Older workers using a computer are significantly more productive than older non-computer users. The positive and significant relationship between labour productivity and IT intensity is not affected by the proportion of older workers.

Keywords: labour productivity, information technology, older workers

JEL Classification: J14, J24, O33

Suggested Citation

Bertschek, Irene and Meyer, Jenny, Do Older Workers Lower IT-Enabled Productivity? Firm-Level Evidence from Germany (2008). ZEW - Centre for European Economic Research Discussion Paper No. 08-129, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1389201 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1389201

Irene Bertschek (Contact Author)

ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research ( email )

P.O. Box 10 34 43
L 7,1 D-68161 Mannheim
Germany

Jenny Meyer

ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research ( email )

P.O. Box 10 34 43
L 7,1
D-68034 Mannheim, 68034
Germany

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