Executives’ Foreign Work Experience and International Knowledge Spillovers: Evidence from China

Abstract

This study conducts a quantitative study on international knowledge spillovers by executives with foreign work experiences at Chinese firms. We use companies’ foreign patent citations as a proxy for international knowledge inflows and match the data with companies’ executives with foreign work experience. The results show that executives with overseas work experience generate international knowledge inflows to the firm; this linkage is influenced by the innovation capacities of the outflow countries and specific positions of the firm’s executives. The knowledge inflows enhance firms’ innovation capacities, as evidenced by an increase in the number of patent applications and citations.