Productivity spillovers across firms through worker mobility

Using matched firm-worker data from Danish manufacturing, we observe firm-to-firm worker movements and find that firms that hired workers from more productive firms experience productivity gains one year after the hiring. The productivity gains associated with hiring from more productive firms are equivalent to 0.35 percent per year for an average firm. Surviving a variety of statistical controls, these gains increase with education, tenure, and skill level of new hires, persist for several years after the hiring was done, and remain broadly similar for different industries and measures of productivity. Competing explanations for these gains, knowledge spillovers in particular, are discussed.

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