Search

This paper provides empirical evidence on the complex role played by technology in affecting the relationship between the participation of EU countries and industries in Global Value Chains (GVCs) and their employment structure over the period 2000-2014. The empirical analysis is based on country/industry level data for 21 EU countries on employment, trade in value added, patents and investments in intangible assets, and focusses on backward linkages within GVCs. The role of technology is analysed by taking into account both the technological intensity of offshoring industries and that of their GVC partners. We study the employment structure by looking at the shares of managers and manual workers, which reflect the “functional specialisation” of the country-sector within GVCs. We find that pre-existing asymmetries in the functional specialisation are highly persistent over time, with little sign of convergence over our observed period. Furthermore, GVC participation is not related to changes in the employment structure. However, this relationship appears to be mediated by country-industries’ initial technological performance. Technological leader industries exhibit, in fact, larger shares of employment in headquarter functions, and this functional specialisation tends to be strengthened as they increase their integration into GVCs. In contrast, country-industries that start off as technological laggards see integration into GVCs accompanied by an increase in the share of employment in fabrication functions. The technological profile of the partners is also found to play a role in the relationship between GVC integration and the functional specialisation of the offshoring country/industry, although different patterns emerge depending on the nature of the partner (manufacturing vs service).

This paper explores the relation between the digitalization and of labour processes, the level of routineness of tasks and changes in employment. The levels of digitalization and routineness of occupations in 796 5-digit ISCO professional groups are measured using data from a unique Italian profession-level survey on skill, task and work contents - the INAPP-ISTAT Survey on Italian Occupations (ICP), an O*NET-type dataset. We develop three novel digitalization indices: a digital use index measuring the use of digital devices and technologies in the workplace, a digital skills index assessing the familiarity and skill in using digital technologies, and a digital tasks index capturing the frequency and importance of selected digital tasks. Using the same data-source the Autor and Dorn routine task intensity index is also computed. This allows us to explore, based on robust indicators on routinization and digitalization, the existence and the strength of a 'routinized biased technological change' specifically associated to the use of digital technologies. Results show the multifaceted nature of both digitalization and routineness processes, both characterized by strong sectoral specificities and by being strongly associated with the skill content of labour professions. Professions characterized by higher digital skills are those showing the best employment performances (although this holds only in manufacturing sector). Both the descriptive and econometric evidences show a negative employment dynamics among professions combining high level of digitalization and routineness.

The diffusion of digital technologies and their impact on employment and skills is investigated inthis article considering six major European countries (Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom) and 42 manufacturing and service industriesover the 2009-2014 period. We analyse two key dimensions of digitalisation - industries' consumption of intermediate inputs from digital-intensive sectorsand investment in ICT tangible and intangible assets per employee. We first investigate their effect on total employment finding that job creation in industriesis supported by high digital consumption and reduced by high digital investment.We then explore how these variables have shaped the evolution of four professional groups - Managers, Clerks, Craft and Manual workers, defined on the basis of ISCO classes - and the increasingly polarisedskill structure of European economies.

Economies and production systems are subject to incessant processes of structural change fuelled by the dynamics of demand, technology and international competition. The increasing international fragmentation of production, also known as "offshoring", is an important element of such a (global in scale) process of structural change having important implications for employment and on the way employment gains and losses are distributed across firms, industries, national economies and components of the labour force. This paper assesses the employment impact of offshoring, in five European countries (Germany, Spain, France, Italy and the United Kingdom), distinguishing between different types of inputs/tasks offshored, different types of offshoring industries and types of professional groups affected by offshoring. Results provide a rather heterogeneous picture of both offshoring patterns and their effects on labour, and the presence of significant differences across industries. Along with this variety of employment outcomes, the empirical evidence suggests that offshoring activities are mainly driven by a cost reduction (labour saving) rationale. This is particularly the case for the manufacturing industry where offshoring is found to exert a negative impact among the less qualified (manual) or more routinized (clerks) types of jobs, while the main difference between high- and low-technology industries has to do with the type of labour tasks that are offshored and the types of domestic jobs that are affected. In hightech industries the negative effects of offshoring on employment are concentrated among the most qualified professional groups (managers and clerks). A specular pattern is found in the case of the low-tech industries where job losses are associated to the offshoring of the least innovative stages of production and manual workers are those most penalised.

This study analyses the major patterns and trends in the spatial distribution of technological capacities in the EU area over the 1996-2011 period, adopting a regional perspective. More specifically, the study aims at: a) assessing the level of technological polarization in the EU area and its dynamics; b) highlighting major changes in the patterns of technological specialization of EU regions; c) identifying the technological trajectories that have been more effective, that is able to sustain long-term economic growth and facilitate catching-up processes of EU laggard regions., JRC.B.3-Territorial Development

This article provides new evidence on the relevance and impact of public support to innovation activities in the case of two European countries: Italy and The Netherlands, given the opposite industrial structure of the two countries. The empirical analysis is based on firm-level data drawn from the Community Innovation Surveys (CIS2 and CIS3). On the basis of the evidence presented in the paper the innovation policy model in Italy could be qualified as "diffusion oriented" whereas the Dutch model of innovation policy seems to be much more selective or "mission oriented". In the Italian case, innovation policies reach a rather large section of the Italian business sector and support mainly the introduction of process innovation and the acquisition of new capital equipment. Instead, innovation policies in The Netherlands seem to be more focused on product innovations, R&D activities and radical innovation projects. Part of the differences of these two models of technology policy can be explained by the different role played by regional and local authorities in supporting firms' innovation activities. In both countries, no additional effects of public incentives on firms' innovation performances have been found even if the reasons behind the lack of additionality are likely to be very different in the two countries.

In the context of the Europe 2020 objective of establishing in the EU a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy, European regions have been called to design and implement national and regional 'Research and Innovation Strategies for Smart Specialisation' (RIS3). The rationale behind the concept of smart specialisation is that, in a context of global competition for talent and resources, most regions can only acquire a real competitive edge by finding niches or by mainstreaming new technologies into traditional industries and exploiting their ‘smart’ regional potential. Although the most promising way for a region to promote its knowledge-based growth is to diversify into technologies, products and services that are closely related to existing dominant technologies and the regional skills base, the European Commission puts special emphasis on a set of technologies labelled as 'Key Enabling Technologies' (KETs). Despite the great emphasis on KETs, there is only very limited evidence on the capability of EU regions to specialise in these fields and there are no studies directly investigating the actual impact of these technologies on regional innovation and economic growth. This report aims at filling these gaps by: i) looking at the relationship between KETs and 'Fast Growing Technologies' (FGTs); ii) providing empirical evidence on the EU regional specialisation in KETs and FGTs; iii) relating technological specialisation to regional innovation and economic growth. In particular, the report aims at answering these questions: 1) Which technologies have emerged as the fastest growing ones in the recent decades? 2) Is there a relationship between fast growing technologies and KETs? 3) Which regions are specialised in FGTs and KETs? 4) Are there convergence and polarization phenomena observable in the evolution of EU regions’ innovative activities in fast growing technologies and KETs? 5) Do EU regions specialized in fastest growing technological fields and key enabling technologies exhibit higher innovation and economic performances? The main results of the report can be summarised as follows. First, only a small share of KETs are also fast growing technologies, although the degree of overlapping between KETs and FGTs varies substantially across different KETs fields. Second, while KETs are concentrated in Central Europe, FGTs prevail in Scandinavian countries and the UK. Third, while there is evidence of some regional convergence in KETs and, to a less extent, in FGTs, spatial correlation increases over time, showing that diffusion often occurs across contiguous regions. Finally, the results of the estimations of the effects of FGTs and KETs on innovation (patents) and economic (GDP per capita) growth show that only specialisation in KETs directly affects economic growth, while specialisation in FGTs has an impact on growth only indirectly, that is through its impact on regions’ innovation performances. Overall, these results confirm the pervasive and enabling role of KETs pointing to the importance for European regions to target these technologies as part of their RIS3 strategies., JRC.J.2-Knowledge for Growth