Work

Customer Capital Spillovers: Evidence from Sales Managers in International Markets

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: 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. (JEL D12, D22, D25, J62, L14, L25)

Source: American Economic Journal Applied Economics

DOI: 10.1257/app.20220572

Authors: Bérengère Patault, Clémence Lenoir

Institutions: University of Amsterdam, Centre de Recherche en Économie et Statistique

Language: English

Topic: Global trade and economics

Subfield: General Economics, Econometrics and Finance

Field: Economics, Econometrics and Finance

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Decent work and economic growth

Open Access status: green

Funders: Yale University, European Commission, Agence Nationale de la Recherche, H2020 European Research Council