Productivity and the age composition of work teams: evidence from the assembly line

Axel Boersch-Supan, University of Mannheim
Matthias Weiss, University of Mannheim

This paper studies the relation between workers’ age and their productivity in work teams. We explore a unique data set that combines daily data on errors occurring in the production process of a large car manufacturer with detailed information on the personal characteristics of workers responsible for the errors. We carefully control for non-random sample selection in two ways: A Heckman-style correction model and worker fixed effects. We do not find evidence that productivity declines with age.