Abstract:
This article analyses the effect of labor turnover on the productivity of Brazilian manufacturing firms between 1996 and 2013. We based our analysis on a theory of learning by doing, where turnover harms productivity by restricting the efficiency gains achieved by workers when they accumulate learning by producing in the same firm. We estimate a learning measurement that takes into account the loss of human capital-resulting from turnover-and its effect on total factor productivity (TFP). Our learning measurement is shown to be robust and has a consistent positive relationship with three different estimates of TFP.