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POPULATION AGING AND INVENTIVE ACTIVITY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 October 2020

Andreas Irmen  and
Anastasia Litina
Andreas Irmen*
Affiliation:
University of Luxembourg
Anastasia Litina
Affiliation:
University of Macedonia
*
Address correspondence to: Andreas Irmen, Department of Economics and Management, University of Luxembourg, Campus Kirchberg (Bloc G), 6, Rue Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, L-1359 Luxembourg, Luxembourg. e-mail: andreas.irmen@uni.lu.
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Abstract

This research empirically establishes and interprets the hypothesis that the relationship between population aging and inventive activity is hump-shaped. We estimate a reduced form, hump-shaped relationship in a panel of 33 OECD countries over the period 1960–2012, as well as in a panel of 248 NUTS 2 regions in Europe over the period 2001–2012. The increasing part of the hump may be associated with various channels including the acknowledgement that population aging requires inventive activity to guarantee current and future standards of living, or the observation that older educated workers are more innovative than their young peers. The decreasing part may reflect the tendency of aging societies to lose dynamism and the willingness to take risks.

Keywords

Population AgingInventive ActivityPanel Estimation
Type
Articles
Information
Macroeconomic Dynamics , Volume 26 , Issue 5 , July 2022 , pp. 1127 - 1161
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2020

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Footnotes

This paper is a revised version of our CESifo working paper Irmen and Litina (2016). A brief summary of this working paper appeared in the Harvard Business Review on January 18, 2017 (see Irmen and Litina (2017).) Both authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the University of Luxembourg under the program “Agecon C—Population Aging: An Exploration of its Effect on Economic Performance and Culture.”

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