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Talents from Abroad. Foreign Managers and Productivity in the United Kingdom

Dimitrios Exadaktylos, Massimo Riccaboni, Armando Rungi

arXiv 8 Jul 2020 · Econometrics · publishedInternational Economics (2019) · 2 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:2007.04055 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

In this paper, we test the contribution of foreign management on firms' competitiveness. We use a novel dataset on the careers of 165,084 managers employed by 13,106 companies in the United Kingdom in the period 2009-2017. We find that domestic manufacturing firms become, on average, between 7% and 12% more productive after hiring the first foreign managers, whereas foreign-owned firms register no significant improvement. In particular, we test that previous industry-specific experience is the primary driver of productivity gains in domestic firms (15.6%), in a way that allows the latter to catch up with foreign-owned firms. Managers from the European Union are highly valuable, as they represent about half of the recruits in our data. Our identification strategy combines matching techniques, difference-in-difference, and pre-recruitment trends to challenge reverse causality. Results are robust to placebo tests and to different estimators of Total Factor Productivity. Eventually, we argue that upcoming limits to the mobility of foreign talents after the Brexit event can hamper the allocation of productive managerial resources.

Citation extraction

63
references
110
in-text mentions
63
distinct cited
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9,558
main-text words

appendix boundary found by appendix_titled_section at “Appendix: Tables and Graphs” · 85% of the source is main text. Read the extracted text to check this.

Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
1Ackerberg, D. A., Caves, K., Frazer, G (2015) Identification properties of recent production function estimators1.00053100%
2Bircan, C (2019) Ownership structure and productivity of multinationals1.00053100%
3Levinsohn, J., Petrin, A (2003) Estimating Production Functions Using Inputs to Control for Unobservables1.00053100%
4Wooldridge, J. M (2009) On estimating firm-level production functions using proxy variables to control for unobservables1.00053100%
5Arnold, J. M., Javorcik, B. S (2009) Gifted kids or pushy parents? foreign direct investment and plant productivity in indonesia0.92843100%
6Dauth, W., Findeisen, S., Moretti, E., Suedekum, J., November (2018) Matching in cities0.92843100%
7Orefice, G., Peri, G (2020) Immigration and worker-firm matching0.92843100%
8Parsons, C., Vézina, P.-L (2018) Migrant networks and trade: The vietnamese boat people as a natural experiment0.84333100%
9Gould, D (1994) Immigrant links to the home country: Empirical implications for u.s0.84333100%
10Mion, G., Opromolla, L. D (2014) Managers' mobility, trade performance, and wages0.84333100%

Showing the top 10 of 63 scored citations.