Human Capital and Export Performance in the Spanish Manufacturing Firms

Abstract

[Abstract] Previous empirical studies have identified the founders and managers´ human capital as an important driver of firm export performance and internationalization. However, the impact of the organizational human capital has been less well examined when collective human capital is considered and important source of competitive advantage. Using a dataset of 1525 Spanish manufacturing firms and employing Logit and Tobit models, this paper investigates the effects of firms' general and specific human capital on the export propensity and intensity. The results shown that differences exist in the effect of general and specific human capital. While the firms' general human capital -employees' education- affects both export propensity and intensity, only some dimensions of specific human capital -employees' experience- affects export propensity and intensity but no the employees' training. Moreover, the firms' general human capital generates greater changes than the effect of specific human capital on export performance