The missing effect of investments of firms in information and communication technologies on productivity is studied by various recent papers (e.g. Oliner and Sichels 1994, Landauer 1995, Brynjolfsson and Hitt 1996). Several explanations are given for this missing link. Our paper deals with two...

This paper analyses the link between the high-skilled employment share and the level of investment in information technology (IT) in the service production process. The analysis is based on an unbalanced panel data set for 933 West German firms over the period 1994-1996. To account for firms...

Firm heterogeneity explains the productivity driven selection mechanism that determines aggregate productivity growth within industries. This paper empirically demonstrates that ICT has a robust impact on firm heterogeneity only when ICT is used intensively and jointly with specific ICT...

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...

This paper empirically analyzes the relationship between firm-provided IT training and the firm's proportion of older workers. Using data from the ZEW ICT survey of the years 2004 and 2007, the results show that a firm's IT intensity plays a crucial role: firms intensively using information...

The paper analyses the relationship between two major challenges firms are faced to: using the potentials of information technologies (IT) as an enabler of process innovations on the one hand and an ageing workforce that might interfere these potentials on the other hand. Econometric results...

Between 1993 and 1995, the majority of German firms in services introduced new organizational practices (OC), in particular total quality management systems, certified ISO 9000, lean administration, flatter hierarchies, delegation of authority and ICT-enabled organizational changes). This paper...

This paper analyzes the relationship between investment in information and communication technologies (ICT), non-ICT-investment, labor productivity and workplace reorganization. Firms are assumed to reorganize workplaces if the productivity gains arising from workplace reorganization exceed the...

This paper analyzes the link between the diffusion of information- and communication technology (ICT) and both the skill structure and employment expectations of the different skill categories. The analysis is based on cross-sectional data for 4150 German firms conducted in mid-2000. The...

This paper analyzes the impact of office machinery and computer capital (OCM) on the demand for heterogeneous labor. A system of static and dynamic factor demand equations based on a variant of the generalized Box-Cox cost function nesting the translog, the generalized Leontief and the...