Managers' mobility, trade performance, and wages

Giordano Mion and Luca David Opromolla

Journal of International Economics, 2014, vol. 94, issue 1, 85-101

Abstract: Knowledge is key to the competitiveness and success of an organization and in particular of a firm. Firms and their managers acquire knowledge via a variety of different channels which are often difficult to track down and quantify. By matching employer–employee data with trade data at the firm level we show that the export experience acquired by managers in previous firms leads their current firm toward higher export performance, and commands a sizeable wage premium for the manager. Moreover, export knowledge is decisive when it is market-specific: managers with experience related to markets served by their current firm receive an even higher wage premium; firms are more likely to enter markets where their managers have experience; exporters are more likely to stay in those markets, and their sales are on average higher. Our findings are robust to controlling for unobserved heterogeneity and, more broadly, endogeneity and indicate that managers' export experience is a first-order feature in the data with an impact on a firm's export performance that is, for example, at least as strong as that of firm productivity.

Keywords: Managers; Firm trade performance; Job mobility; Export experience; Wage premium (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F16 J31 J62 L2 M2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (85)

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Working Paper: Managers' mobility, trade performance, and wages (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:inecon:v:94:y:2014:i:1:p:85-101

DOI: 10.1016/j.jinteco.2014.06.001

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