Preparing to Export

Abstract

Exporters differ considerably in terms of export-market participation over time and employment size. But this marked diversity among exporters is not reflected in their workforce composition regarding commonly observed worker skills or occupations. Using Brazilian linked employer-employee data, we turn to a typically unknown worker characteristic: a worker's prior experience at other exporters. We show that expected export status, predicted with current destination-country trade instruments, leads firms to prepare their workforce by hiring workers from other exporters. Hiring away exporter workers is associated with both a wider subsequent reach of destinations and a deeper market penetration at the poaching firm, but only with reduced market penetration at the firm losing the worker. This evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that expected export-market access exerts a labor demand shock, for which exporters actively prepare with selective hiring, and with the idea that a few key workers affect a firm's competitive advantage.

Export Spillovers: Opening the Black Box

“…This is in line with a wider stream of literature which focuses on the effect of labour mobility on different measures of firm performance providing evidence of learning-by-hiring (Parrotta and Pozzoli, 2012). Closer to our paper, evidence of a positive relationship between hiring managers (or employees) from an exporting firm and the recruiting firm's propensity to start exporting in subsequent years has been recently found (Molina and Muendler, 2009;Mion and Opromolla, 2011;Sala and Yalcin, 2012;Andersen and 4 It is not possible to distinguish between the type of knowledge transferred, for instance whether it is knowledge about international markets or technological knowledge. The latter could help firms to increase their productivity and their probability of being able to export.…”

“…This is in line with a wider stream of literature which focuses on the effect of labour mobility on different measures of firm performance providing evidence of learning‐by‐hiring (Parrotta and Pozzoli, ). Closer to our paper, evidence of a positive relationship between hiring managers (or employees) from an exporting firm and the recruiting firm's propensity to start exporting in subsequent years has been recently found (Molina and Muendler, ; Mion and Opromolla, ; Sala and Yalcin, ; Andersen and Choquette, ) . Overall, this evidence points towards the importance of labour mobility in explaining how export spillovers work at the firm level.…”

A Unified Theory of Firm Selection and Growth *

“…The fact that the proportion of small firms with negative growth rates is almost the same in the two histograms lowers the probability of significant measurement error. Note: The data cover the universe of Brazilian merchandise exporting transactions from 1990-2001 and are described in Molina and Muendler (2008). The outlier observations of growth rates of more than 900% or less than -90% are excluded.…”

Ethnic diversity and firms' export behavior

“…While it is consolidated that productivity determines firms' selection into exporting, recent hypotheses have started to investigate more closely the deliberate efforts undertaken by firms to become exporters (conscious self-selection). Some studies have explored technological investments or quality upgrading (Alvarez and Lopez, 2005; Iacovone and Javorcik, 2012), while other studies have focused on human capital investments with firms building up the right expertise in preparation for exporting (Sala and Yalcin, 2012;Molina and Muendler, 2013). Our paper identifies the diversity of the workforce as a driver of internationalization, which 4 …”