Customer Capital Spillovers: Evidence from Sales Managers in International Markets

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Patault, Berengere; Lenoir, Clemence
• 署名单位: University of Amsterdam; Institut Polytechnique de Paris; ENSAE Paris; Ecole Polytechnique
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-APPLIED ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7782
• DOI: 10.1257/app.20220572
• 发表日期: 2024
• 页码: 404-443
• 关键词: technology spillovers; FIRMS; PRODUCTIVITY; WORKER; networks; mobility; export; TRADE

摘要

Expanding their customer base is crucial for firms to grow. This paper leverages sales managers' job-to-job transitions to better understand how buyer-seller relationships form. Combining unique French firm-to-firm trade data with matched employer-employee data, we perform an event study analysis that exploits the timing of sales managers' transitions from one firm to another for identification. We find recruiting a sales manager increases by 36 percent the probability to export to the buyers of her former firm. The expansion of the firm's customer base is detrimental to the buyer's former suppliers. Yet business stealing is partial; job-to-job transitions are not zero-sum.