Employment of High-skilled Labour, Computer Investment and Innovation Expenditures. Speed-up of Technological Change

This paper analyses the link between the high-skilled employment share proxied by university graduates and the level of investment in information and communication technologies (ICT) as a percentage of total investment. The analysis is based on a survey of 1,000 Austrian firms in 2000. To account for firms which do not employ university graduates we apply a standard Tobit model. The empirical evidence indicates that firms with a higher ICT investment ratio employ a larger fraction of high-skilled workers. Finally, we find that innovation expenditures and the existence of patents are also important determinants explaining the high-skilled labour share.