Firm Employment Growth, R&D Expenditures and Exports

This paper studies firms’ decisions to export and invest in R&D and their effects on employment growth and labor flows for a sample of Italian SMEs operating in the manufacturing industry. After accounting for the under-reporting of R&D in SMEs, our quantile regressions reveal that:

(i) R&D is associated with higher employment growth rates, higher hiring rates and lower separation rates;

(ii) R&D-induced exports are negatively related to employment growth and accessions and positively related to separations; and

(iii) pure exports are not a driver of employment growth and labor flows.

Keywords: Exports, R&D, Firm Growth, Quantile Regression

JEL Classification: J63, M51, O31, F14

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Di Cintio, Marco and Ghosh, Sucharita and Grassi, Emanuele, Firm Employment Growth, R&D Expenditures and Exports (June 27, 2016). FEEM Working Paper No. 44.2016, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2800973 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2800973