Innovation, productive inequality and labor inequality in Argentinean manufacturing firms

Abstract

This paper examines the connection between innovative efforts of Argentine manufacturing companies and their level and distribution of productivity, wage and labor skills, within the framework of structural heterogeneity characteristic of peripheral economies. There are only a few studies which addressed these problematic relations in developing countries at a firm level. An approach to the problems of development and quantitative methodology is applied, starting from a preliminary hypothesis: greater innovative efforts in companies, greater productive and labor inequality among them, conditioned by structural heterogeneity. Primary data used in this study come from the National Survey of Employment and Innovation Dynamics, for Argentine manufacturing companies in 2010-2012. The main findings indicate that correlation of innovation and the levels of productivity, wages and labor skills is significant, differing in their magnitude among companies and industrial sectors by virtue of the structural heterogeneity of the Argentine industry.