Patrick Aubert

New Technologies, Organisation and Age: Firm-Level Evidence

We investigate the relationships between new technologies, innovative workplace practices and the age structure of the workforce in a sample of French firms. We find evidence that the wage-bill share of older workers is lower in innovative firms and that the opposite holds for younger workers. This age bias affects both men and women. It is also evidenced within occupational groups. More detailed analysis of employment inflows and outflows shows that new technologies essentially affect older workers through reduced hiring opportunities. In contrast, organisational innovations mainly affect their probability of exit, which decreases much less than for younger workers following reorganisation. Copyright 2006 Royal Economic Society. (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Social Contract and Age at Retirement: Some Elements of a Franco-American Comparison

Age at retirement is one of the key parameters of the intergenerational social contract that has been progressively set in place by developed countries, and its adaptation to the new demographic conditions of this century is at the center of the pension debate. This debate goes further than the adaptation of pension rules stricto sensu. The main impact of these pension rules is on labor supply (Blondal and Scarpetta, 1999; Gruber and Wise, 2004; Duval, 2003). But the demand side of the labor market is now recognized as being equally important for explaining ages at effective exits from the labor force, and a specific role is also played by institutions that try to protect older workers from the consequences of low labor demand, such as pre-retirement schemes or specific adaptations of unemployment insurance targeted toward this category ofworkers (OECD, 2005). France provides an interesting case study for analyzing how these various components interact. France is characterized by one of the world’s lowest employment rates in the 55–64 age group, due to the superposition of relatively generous pension rules, a strong propensity of employers to get rid of more senior workers and the development of numerous opportunities to leave the labor force before normal retirement age (Lerais and Marioni, 2004; Marioni, 2005). Some significant steps have been made toward changing this state of affairs, through the 1993 and 2003 pension reforms, but the situation remains strongly contrasted with the situation of some other countries, especially the US, where labor force participation remains high for this age group. The purpose of this chapter is precisely to develop the most salient aspects of the functioning of the labor market for French senior workers, using