Customer Capital Spillovers: Evidence from Sales Managers in International Markets
利用法国企业间贸易数据和员工流动数据，研究发现招聘销售经理能使企业向该经理前雇主客户出口的概率提高36%，但这一扩张会损害前雇主的供应商，不过并非零和博弈。
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.