Program > Papers by author > Bergeaud Antonin

The innovation premium to low skill jobs
Antonin Bergeaud  1, 2@  , Philippe Aghion  3@  , Rachel Griffith  4@  , Richard Blundell  5@  
1 : Paris School of Economics  (PSE)
Ecole d'Économie de Paris
2 : Centre de recherche de la Banque de France  -  Website
Banque de France
31 rue Croix des petits champs 75001 PARIS - France -  France
3 : London School of Economics and Political Science  (LSE)  -  Website
Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE -  United Kingdom
4 : Institute for Fiscal Studies  (IFS)  -  Website
The Institute for Fiscal Studies 7 Ridgmount Street, London WC1E 7AE. -  United Kingdom
5 : University College of London [London]  (UCL)  -  Website
Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT -  United Kingdom

This paper uses matched employee-employer data from the UK augmented
with information on R&D expenditures, to analyze the relationship between innovativeness of the firm and the wages of workers in occupations with different levels of skills. We show that more R\&D intensive firms pay higher wages on average. The premium to working in a R&D
intensive firm is higher for workers in low-skilled occupations than for workers in high-skilled occupations.
We develop a simple model of the firm where the complementarity between workers in high-skilled and low-skilled occupations increases with the firm's innovativeness. An additional prediction of the model, which is also confirmed by the empirical analysis, is that the tenure of workers in low-skilled occupations is longer in more innovative firms than in less innovative firms.


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