Agglomeration of exporters and productivity spillovers: firm-level evidence from italy

This paper investigates whether the firms? productivity may be subject to spillovers from the internationalization behavior of firms within the same local production system. Using a unique dataset for a representative sample of Italian firms we find evidence that the sectorial and geographical agglomeration of exporters improves the labour productivity of domestic non exporting firms. We also show that the potential of productivity spillovers from exporting activities emerge mainly for small firms. Our results are robust to controls for the agglomeration of family firms, dynastic management and human capital of employers, i.e some of these specific features of Italian firms that may affect the capacity of domestic non exporters in receiving the technological and managerial externalities from the proximity with exporters and multinationals.