Firm performance, skill recombination and regional culture

This study connects worker mobility and industry-specific skills, regional cultural characteristics and economic performance in a novel empirical way. Building on the notions of technological relatedness and unrelatedness of worker experience, we devote special attention to: (i) causal identification, and (ii) the linguistic and cultural homogeneity of the community of firms and workers under scrutiny. Contrary to several previous studies, we find that in a culturally homogeneous context, and controlling for firm heterogeneity, the unrelated combinations of skills constitute a relevant source of productivity gains. We discuss our approach in light of previous studies and derive implications for place-based policy.