International managerial skill and big Colombian exporting firms' performance, 2006-2014

This paper presents a novel methodology to measure international managerial skill, which has not been directly measured in the specialized management quality surveys. The international managerial quality variable captures the manager’s organizational capital contribution to improve production efficiency of exported products that compete in the international market by price, and to upgrade quality capacity of the exported products that compete by quality. Using a sample of the biggest private Colombian exporting firms, the short-term econometric analysis indicates that: i) international managerial quality has a positive and robust effect on total exported value via intensive margin, ii) the exported value elasticity relative to international managerial quality is higher but not statistically different than exported value elasticity relative to exogenous international demand shocks, and iii) better managers in the international market learn by exporting.