Preparing for export opportunities

Claudio Labanca, Danielken Molina and Marc-Andreas Muendler

Journal of International Economics, 2024, vol. 152, issue C

Abstract: This paper investigates how firms prepare their workforce to export. We employ a novel identification strategy to isolate how a firm’s hiring decision at home responds to export opportunities that arise from exogenous changes to product demand abroad. Combining Brazilian exporter and linked employer–employee data, we show that firms act on better chances to export by hiring workers with prior experience at exporting firms. We find that firms concentrate this preparatory hiring of experts in skilled blue-collar occupations and that firms separate from the previously hired experts when the predicted export-market participation fails to materialize. The evidence is consistent with the tenet that a few exporting experts in select occupations shape a firm’s competitive advantage.

Keywords: International trade; Exporter behavior; Trade and labor market interactions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F12 F14 F16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:inecon:v:152:y:2024:i:c:s0022199624000953

DOI: 10.1016/j.jinteco.2024.103968

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