Migrants’ Influence on Firm-level Exports

Immigrants, occupations and firm export performance

“…We assume that immigrants in decisional and operative jobs (such as high‐skilled occupations) decrease export costs toward destination j , so that and . In line with empirical evidence, we assume that these workers provide operational information about their origin country that eventually allows their firm to overcome trade barriers for that particular destination; we also consider that these immigrant workers have a general knowledge of foreign markets that allows them to lower export costs toward other destinations (Andrews et al., ; Hatzigeorgiou & Lodefalk, ; Parsons & Winters, ). Finally, we account for non‐linearities in the effect of immigrant employment by allowing these derivatives to equal zero.…”

Immigrant entrepreneurs, diasporas, and exports

“…Another strand of literature, based on firm‐level evidence, highlights the trade‐enhancing role of immigrants inside the firm. Hatzigeorgiou and Lodefalk (), in an employer–employee panel for Sweden, show that small firms in particular can gain from hiring foreign‐born workers who are skilled and recently arrived immigrants. Similar evidence of a positive effect of foreign employees on trade is found for Denmark (Hiller, ), France (Marchal & Nedoncelle, ; Mitaritonna, Orefice, & Peri, ), and Germany (Andrews, Schank, & Upward, ), especially for skilled or senior workers.…”

Temporary expats for exports: micro-level evidence

“…23 Since we empirically will study the exports of firms in one country-Sweden-the source-country index i is suppressed. The stock of immigrants from j is included to control for what White (2007) has coined the transplanted home bias in demand, which may also affect exports, as emphasized in Hatzigeorgiou and Lodefalk (2016). 24 We proxy firm investment in links to a foreign market with the hiring of temporary expats.…”

“…In previous studies, this has motivated a focus on immigrants' impact on exports rather than imports. However, immigrant preferences may also have an indirect effect on host country supply, including exports (Hatzigeorgiou and Lodefalk 2016). Therefore, we include the immigrant stock to attempt to control for any transplanted home bias effect on exports.…”

“…Column 3 contains the average marginal effect in the target equation of a two-step panel selection model, while taking interactions into account; for the first-step yearly Probit results, see Tables B15-16. ** p \ 0.05; *** p \ 0.01 65 Hatzigeorgiou and Lodefalk (2016) describe the construction of the measure in detail.…”