Preparing for export opportunities

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Labanca, Claudio; Molina, Danielken; Muendler, Marc-Andreas
• 署名单位: Monash University; IZA Institute Labor Economics; Microsoft; University of California System; University of California San Diego; Leibniz Association; Ifo Institut; National Bureau of Economic Research
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-1996
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jinteco.2024.103968
• 发表日期: 2024
• 关键词: International trade; Exporter behavior; Trade and labor market interactions

摘要

This paper investigates how firms prepare their workforce to export. We employ a novel identification strategy to isolate how a firm's hiring decision at home responds to export opportunities that arise from exogenous changes to product demand abroad. Combining Brazilian exporter and linked employer-employee data, we show that firms act on better chances to export by hiring workers with prior experience at exporting firms. We find that firms concentrate this preparatory hiring of experts in skilled blue-collar occupations and that firms separate from the previously hired experts when the predicted export-market participation fails to materialize. The evidence is consistent with the tenet that a few exporting experts in select occupations shape a firm's competitive advantage.