AUTHORS
Ronald B. Davies, Gianluca Santoni, Farid Toubal and Giulio Vannelli
Abstract
There is a long-standing recognition that innovating firms often have higher employment growth. More recently, there is increasing understanding that innovation is concentrated among a small number of generally large firms. We contribute to this debate by showing that the innovation-employment link for a firm is dependent on its multinational status. While we find that more innovative firms are also faster growing ones – even after accounting for size – there is an even greater effect from innovation for multinationals. While we do find evidence suggesting that such firms benefit from innovation done by other affiliates of the same parent, we nonetheless find that they benefit more from their own innovation as well. Thus, this points to important features of multinationals such as integrated global supply chains that are key to understanding the relationship between innovation and employment.
Keywords:
Knowledge spillovers, Employment, Innovation, Technological diversification
Publication Date
June 2025
Working papers present the results of ongoing research and make current research results freely available. Due to their preliminary nature, working papers are subject to ongoing peer review. In this context, updated paper versions may be made available at irregular intervals. It may also be useful to contact the author(s) directly about the results before referring to or citing a paper.
