Seminar in International Economics: Heterogeneous Trade Elasticity and Managerial Skills (Online event)

The Competence Centre for International Economics Research (FIW) kindly invites to participate in the Seminar in International Economics on the topic

Heterogeneous Trade Elasticity and Managerial Skills

Gianluca Orefice
University of Paris-Dauphine

Thursday, 22nd of September 2022, 3:00 p.m. (CET)

Registration link:
https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_sA9ItvggQVaY49UWFhrcxg
The join link will be sent immediately after registration.

This presentation is based on a paper co-authored with Maria Bas, Lionel Fontagné and Irene Iodice.

Abstract:
This paper investigates the role played by firms’ managerial skills on the heterogeneous reaction of exporters to real exchange rate changes. Our empirical analysis relies on detailed firm-product-destination level export data from France for the period 1995-2008 matched with specific information on firms’ skill composition by occupation (managers, R&D workers, professionals and technicians). Our findings show that high-skill intensive firms have larger exporter price elasticity to real exchange rate variations and a lower elasticity of export quantities. While a 10% depreciation of the real exchange rate makes firms with sample-average skill intensity charging 0.5% higher export price, we show that this effect is 40% higher for exporters with one standard deviation larger skill intensity. Managers and R&D workers contribute the most to this heterogeneous pricing-to-market behavior offirms. These findings are robust to controlling for the competing explanations of firm productivity and quality.

The seminar series is organised by the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (wiiw) in co-operation with FIW, the Centre of Competence in International Economics. The seminar provides a forum for presentation and discussion of recent academic research in the field of international economics.