Firm export diversification and change in workforce composition

Sarah Guillou () and Tania Treibich
Additional contact information
Sarah Guillou: OFCE - Observatoire français des conjonctures économiques (Sciences Po) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po

SciencePo Working papers Main from HAL

Abstract: The objective of this paper is to show that part of the fixed cost of a firm's trade expansion is due to the acquisition of new internal capabilities (e.g., technology, production processes or skills), which implies a costly change in the firm's internal labor organization. We investigate the relationship between a firm's labor structure, in terms of the relative number of managers, and the scope of its export portfolio, in terms of its product-destination varieties. The empirical analysis is based on a matched employer-employee dataset covering the population of French firms from tradable sectors over the period 2009-2015. Our analysis suggests that market ex- pansion, both through export entry and export diversification, is associated with a change in the firm's workforce composition, namely an increase in the number of managerial layers. These results are generally confirmed with the use of an instrumental variable approach to control for reverse causality. We show how these results are consistent with a simple model, where the complexity of a firm's operations increases with the number of product-destination couples ex- ported and the manager's role is to address the unsolved problems arising from such increased operational complexity.

Keywords: Exports diversification; Managers; Occupations; Employer-employee data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-06-01
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal-sciencespo.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03403222
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal-sciencespo.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03403222/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Firm export diversification and change in workforce composition (2019)
Working Paper: Firm export diversification and change in workforce composition (2019)
Working Paper: Firm export diversification and change in workforce composition (2017)
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:hal:spmain:hal-03403222

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SciencePo Working papers Main from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Contact - Sciences Po Departement of Economics ().