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Labor flows are important channels for knowledge spillovers between firms; yet competing arguments provide different explanations for this mechanism. Firstly, productivity differences between the source and recipient firms have been found to drive these spillovers; secondly, previous evidence suggests that labor flows from multinational enterprises (MNEs) provide productivity gains for firms; and thirdly, industry relatedness across firms have been found important, because industry-specific skills have an impact on organizational learning and production. In this paper, we aim to disentangle the effects of productivity gap, multinational experience and industry relatedness in a common framework. Hungarian employee-employer linked panel data from 2003-2011 imply that the incoming labor from more productive firms is associated with increasing future productivity. The impact of multinational spillovers cannot be confirmed, once productivity differences between the firms are taken into account. Furthermore, we find that flows from related industries outperform the effect of flows from same and unrelated industries even if we control for the effects of productivity gap and multinational spillovers.

Multiproduct firms often diversify into technologically related activities to exploit efficiencies of joint production; however, unrelated products in the company’s portfolio provide access to distinct markets and can help to avoid industry-specific shocks. Yet, the underlying mechanisms of related and unrelated diversification are still poorly understood. Here we investigate diversification decisions of firms in periods when corporations’ markets are hit by a demand shocks. In these times, cost efficiency considerations might drive firms to reduce costs by narrowing product portfolios and focusing on combinations of technologically related products, in which economies of scope and mutual capabilities can be exploited. To test this hypothesis, we consider two measures of demand shocks, decreasing sales volumes on the product market and increasing import competition; and analyze their association with changes of product portfolios of Hungarian firms in the 2003-2012 period. We find that production has become more coherent in terms of technological relatedness after firms were exposed to demand shocks. Evidence suggests related adjustment of firm production after demand shocks such that products unrelated to firms’ core product are dropped from the portfolio but related products are added.

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The aim of this article is to analyze the contribution of social ties to moving to high-opportunity locations and assess whether their effect is more pronounced for low-income individuals as a compensation for economic resources. This is done by utilizing Swedish administrative data and by focusing on a wide range of relationships (observed directly or inferred from the data): close and distant family ties, former co-workers and university peers. For estimating the effect of social ties, we use linear probability models, where observed migration is regressed on individual-specific and target-specific characteristics. To account for the nonrandom sorting of movers between locations, we apply sending municipality–target municipality–occupation fixed effects. Our results suggest that there is a positive relationship between migration and the presence of links at given targets for all the examined contact types. The effects are even stronger if the targets are hard-to-reach municipalities (located in Stockholm County or a municipality with higher housing prices). We also demonstrate that, when moving to such opportunity-rich areas, ties to former co-workers and university peers are even more essential assets for those with limited resources. Furthermore, we show that direct help with housing through contacts is an existing factor that contributes to the effect of social networks on residential mobility. The results reinforce the idea that social ties may be of great help in reducing barriers to mobility and can be used to compensate for limited economic resources. We demonstrate the validity of our fixed-effect estimation strategy using a placebo contact approach.

Adolescent romantic relationships are sources of social influence concerning educational achievement and delinquent behavior. Integrated schooling is known to induce inter-ethnic friendship relations, however, it also creates the opportunity of inter-ethnic dating. Based on contact theory, inter-ethnic personal relationships or long-term exposure decreases ethnic prejudice, thus it is proposed that willingness to date between ethnic groups may also increase. The question arises, whether in the school context exposure is enough for this mechanism to emerge, or personal contact is necessary. It must be also taken into account, that romantic relationships are embedded in status relations within schools. Previous studies on intermarriage and homogamy found a "social exchange" mechanism, that lower status members of majority groups are more likely to choose minority partners. Translated to the adolescent society, it is assumed, that the less popular members of the majority groups are those, who are more willing to form inter-ethnic dating relations. To address the above questions empirically, the first wave of the Hungarian network panel "Wired into EachOther" was analyzed, containing data of 1214 9th grade students in 43 classes of seven secondary schools. Inter-ethnic dating preferences of Roma and non-Roma students were measured by dyadic attribution of physical attractiveness, and nominations of willingness to date. Statistical analysis was carried out using multilevel p2 models. They suggest that mixed groups are not sufficient, but personal contacts are necessary to decrease same ethnicity preferences in dating. An additional tendency is that among majority students, those who are isolated from the friendship networks are the ones who are more willing to date with the minority group.

Social connections that reach distant places are advantageous for individuals, firms and cities, providing access to new skills and knowledge. However, systematic evidence on how firms build global knowledge access is still lacking. In this paper, we analyse how global work connections relate to differences in the skill composition of employees within companies and local industry clusters. We gather survey data from 10% of workers in a local industry in Sweden, and complement this with digital trace data to map co-worker networks and skill composition. This unique combination of data and features allows us to quantify global connections of employees and measure the degree of skill similarity and skill relatedness to co-workers. We find that workers with extensive local networks typically have skills related to those of others in the region and to those of their co-workers. Workers with more global ties typically bring in less related skills to the region. These results provide new insights into the composition of skills within knowledge-intensive firms by connecting the geography of network contacts to the diversity of skills accessible through them.

Abstract:Labor flows are major source of knowledge spillover between companies, in