Age, Human Capital and the Geography of Innovation

Abstract

Policy-makers and business leaders are currently trying to assess the issue of demographic change and how, and to what extent innovative activity depends on the age structure of the labour force. Motivated by this increased public interest, a number of studies1 analysing the age dependency of patenting output have been conducted. So far, empirical evidence tells us that innovative activity, as measured by patenting, starts at around 30 years, rises until a period of maximum productivity and slowly declines around age 50. Furthermore, the age, when maximum performance is reached, differs across industrial sectors. These findings are in line with earlier, well established evidence provided by industrial and organisational psychology (I-O psychology) which found that creative performance declines over one's life course. However, creative performance peaks at very different ages depending on the domain (Simonton 1988).

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