Spillovers from Foreign Firms Through Worker Mobility: An Empirical Investigation

25 Pages Posted: 21 Oct 2002

See all articles by Holger Görg

Holger Görg

University of Kiel; Kiel Institute for the World Economy

Eric Strobl

Ecole Polytechnique, Paris - Department of Economic Sciences; IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Date Written: October 2002

Abstract

While there has been a large empirical literature on productivity spillovers from foreign to domestic firms this literature treats the channels through which these spillover effects work as a black box. This paper attempts to fill this gap in the literature. Our results suggest that firms which are run by owners that worked for multinationals in the same industry immediately prior to opening up their own firm have higher productivity growth than other domestic firms. This suggests that these entrepreneurs bring with them some of the knowledge accumulated in the multinational which can be usefully employed in the domestic firm. We do not find any positive effects on firm level productivity if the owner had experience in multinationals in other industries, or received training by multinationals.

Keywords: Foreign Direct Investment, Spillovers, Worker Mobility, Training

JEL Classification: F21, F23, J61

Suggested Citation

Gorg, Holger and Strobl, Eric, Spillovers from Foreign Firms Through Worker Mobility: An Empirical Investigation (October 2002). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=341480 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.341480

Holger Gorg (Contact Author)

University of Kiel ( email )

Olshausenstr. 40
D-24118 Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein 24118
Germany

Kiel Institute for the World Economy ( email )

P.O. Box 4309
Kiel, Schleswig-Hosltein D-24100
Germany

Eric Strobl

Ecole Polytechnique, Paris - Department of Economic Sciences ( email )

Ecole Polytechnique
Department of Economics
Paris, 75005
France

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
126
Abstract Views
1,403
Rank
404,654
PlumX Metrics