The creation and capture of rents: wages and innovation in a panel of UK companies

Van Reenen, John ORCID: 0000-0001-9153-2907 (1996) The creation and capture of rents: wages and innovation in a panel of UK companies. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 111 (1). pp. 195-226. ISSN 0033-5533

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Abstract

This paper examines the impact of technological innovation on wages using a panel of British firms. A head-count measure of major innovations between 1945 and 1983 is combined with share price and accounting information. Innovating firms are found to have higher average wages, but rival innovation tends to depress own wages. This appears consistent with a model where wages are partly determined by a sharing in the rents generated by innovation. In other words, innovation may be a good instrument for proxies for rents such as profitability, quasi rents, or Tobin's (average) Q. Instrumental variable estimates of the elasticity between wages and quasi rents are about 0.29.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	http://qje.oxfordjournals.org/
Additional Information:	© 1996 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Divisions:	Economics Centre for Economic Performance
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor T Technology > T Technology (General)
JEL classification:	O - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth > O3 - Technological Change; Research and Development
Date Deposited:	27 Apr 2007
Last Modified:	11 Dec 2024 22:02
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/1580

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