Human Capital and Productivity Dynamics: Evidence from Spanish manufacturing firms

This paper uses firm level data from Spanish manufacturing firms to provide evidence on the effect of human capital on the mobility of firms within the productivity distribution. We find that while larger and older firms are more prone to stay in the same relative position, human capital is an important factor driving upward mobility both for incumbents and newly created firms. In fact, firms with higher proportion of engineers and workers with a university degree are more likely to reach the top of the productivity distribution