Knowledge Transfer from Multinationals through Labour Mobility: Are There Effects on Productivity, Product Sophistication and Exporting?

Jaan Masso () and Priit Vahter

Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, 2019, vol. 55, issue 12, 2774-2795

Abstract: We investigate whether labour mobility from foreign-owned firms to local firms in the host economy is associated with an increase in productivity, export product complexity and other export indicators of domestic firms. Based on employer-employee level data from Estonia, we confirm that hiring employees with experience from foreign-owned firms is associated with an increase in the total factor productivity (TFP) of the firm and the higher export propensity and breadth of export markets or products. However, on average, these within-firm effects on TFP appear to be not working through increases in the level of the complexity of the export product portfolio of domestically owned firms. One implication of this result is that other channels of upgrading than changes in the Hausmann-Hidalgo export product complexity measure may be more important in this context; for example, such as upgrading the tasks or activities in the global value chain of a product.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/1540496X.2018.1530653 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mes:emfitr:v:55:y:2019:i:12:p:2774-2795

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/MREE20

DOI: 10.1080/1540496X.2018.1530653

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Emerging Markets Finance and Trade from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().