Manager education and firm productivity - evidence from Brazil

We merge two important Brazilian datasets (RAIS and PIA) to produce firm-level total factor productivity estimates that control for workers' human capital. Then we investigate the correlation between top managers' education and firms' TFP considering different levels of industry disaggregation. We find a positive, albeit small correlation for the industrial sector as a whole, and much higher correlations for some 2-digit industries. Also at the 2-digit level, we find that the positive correlation between firm TFP and manager schooling is lower for industries more dependent on external finance. Our results are robust to alternative, control function methods of TFP estimation, and to using different measures of manager education.