Does the presence of high-skilled employees increase total and high-skilled employment in the long run? Evidence from Austria

Abstract

Studies conducted for the US have found a positive effect of human capital endowments on employment growth, with human capital endowments diverging at the same time. In contrast, studies for European countries have found convergence of human capital endowments. This paper tests these relationships for 99 Austrian districts for the observation period 1971-2011 by estimating how the presence of high-skilled employment affects total, low-skilled and high-skilled employment growth.To this end, OLS, fixed effects and first difference regressions are estimated. The results show continuous convergence of high-skilled employment which, however, slowed downed significantly since the 1990s. In contrast to previous studies, evidence for positive effects of high-skilled on total and low-skilled employment is only weak and varies over time. Furthermore, the results show that total and high-skilled employment in suburban areas grew faster than in other regions, while districts which bordered the Eastern Bloc were disadvantaged. Nevertheless, spatial neighbourhood effects within Austria are only weak.

The Long-Run Interregional Distribution of Human Capital in Austria: What Role for Knowledge Intensity of Production?

“…While knowledge-intensive services display a positive impact on growth when controlling for initial schooling levels, no such effect can be detected for high and medium-high technology manufacturing industries. This result resembles Sardadvar & reiner (2015), who find no positive effect of knowledge-intensive industries on regional skill endowments even though the respective variables' definitions are different from the present study. In contrast, evidence for positive impacts of agglomerations and universities exist.…”

“…Furthermore, the regression includes a time dummy that equals one for the years when Austria was a member of the European Union. Sardadvar & reiner (2015) find some strong interaction effects of this dummy with other variables on growth of total employment and high-skilled employment share which is explained by the authors by a change of framework conditions (ibid.). The summary statistics of Table 2 and the cross-sectional results of Table 3 display trend reversals that emerged somewhere during the 1990s in the present context, too, although it is not clear whether they are due to EU membership as such.…”

“…Economic structure is captured by the (i) number of employees in small firms, with the latter being defined as one that occupies nine or less employees, the (ii) total number of large firms, with the latter occupying 100 or more employees, and (iii) specialisation as captured by the krugman index (see möller 2012) based on the above-mentioned 60 sectors. Data on firm-size distributions stem from business statistics [Betriebsstättenzählung], the estimation of small firm employees follows Sardadvar & reiner (2015).…”

“…In contrast, studies for European countries (Südekum 2008;raTTSø & STokke 2013) have found convergence of human capital endowments. In a study based on Austrian districts, Sardadvar & reiner (2015) also find strong convergence of human capital endowments which has, however, decelerated since the 1990s. It should be mentioned that these studies in most instances equalise human capital with the share of college and university graduates which is discounting a large part of human capital as it, by definition, captures all types of skills.…”

Innovationsland Österreich F&E, Unternehmensentwicklung und Standortattraktivität

“…Die Industrie benötigt im mittleren Technologiesegment offenbar keine hohe Akademikerquote, um international wettbewerbsfähig zu sein (BMWF u.a., 2013). Eine Variation der Akademikerquote hat in OÖ sterreich auch kaum einen Einfluss auf das regionale Beschäftigungswachstum (Sardadvar und Reiner, 2016).…”