Spillover Effects through Worker Mobility: Evidence from Slovenian SMEs

Abstract

The paper tests for potential productivity spillovers arising through worker mobility from foreign owned firms to domestic SMEs using Slovenian data, covering the period from 2002 to 2010. Separate analyses were done for the service and manufacturing sector. My paper contributes to a segment of literature,that is relatively scarce, since it requires the use of linked employer-employee databases, which emerged only recently. I find robust evidence in support of the hypothesis, that flows of highly educated workers from foreign owned firms to domestic SMEs boost total factor productivity growth of domestic service SMEs.