We uniquely examine the relationship between firm-sponsored training and product quality competition. Using an oligopolistic model of both price and quality competition, we show that an increase in the sensitivity of demand to product quality will strengthen firms’ incentives to train their...

We analyze a sample of consumer-electronics products sold by the US NewEgg online-retailer to study the impact of Price Matching Guarantees (PMGs) policies on prices. By applying aDifference-in-Differences approach,we find that prices of the policy-adopting retailer increase by 4.7% during the...

This paper investigates the issue of how alternative unionization structures in labour markets affect the choice of product quality differentiation by firms in product markets, and how this determines relative welfare outcomes of different union structures. In the presence of decentralized wage...

This paper models and estimates total factor productivity (TFP) growth parametrically. The model is a generalization of the traditional production model where technology is represented by a time trend. TFP growth is decomposed into unobservable technical change, scale economies and observable...

The aim of this paper is to investigate the productivity impact of business visits, relative to traditional drivers of productivity enhancement, namely capital formation and R&D. To carry out the analysis, we combine unique and novel data on business visits sourced from the U.S. National...

There is a dearth of research on the impact of technological change over employment in least developed countries (LDCs) embarking on globalization and consequent international technological transfer. Using a panel of 1,940 Ethiopian firms over the period 1996–2004 and deploying GMMSYS...

Using a unique firm-level database comprising the top European R&D investors over the period 2002-2013 and running LSDVC estimates, this study finds a significant labourfriendly impact of R&D expenditures. However, this positive employment effect appears limited in magnitude and entirely due to...

The aim of the paper is threefold. First, we compute differences on job tasks (Abstract, Routine and Manual) across a harmonized and hence comparable sample of Anglo-saxon, many European and even Asian advanced countries. We do so by using very precise information on job contents at the worker...

A new technological epoch is underway – the so-called Machine Age –reflecting advances in artificial intelligence, digitalisation and Big Data. Some commentators have claimed that this epoch is different from previous ones in that it will produce large-scale technological unemployment, while...

This study, using original survey data of 10,000 individuals, analyzes the possible impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics on employment. The first interest of this study is to ascertain, from the viewpoint of workers, what types of worker characteristics are associated with the...