International Experience and Labour Market Success: Analysing Panel Data from Poland

International experience, defined here as living abroad for two or more months, should enhance individual success on the labour market, ceteris paribus, thanks to the human capital and economic resources that accrue. I use the Polish Panel Survey POLPAN 1988–2008 to examine the impact of having spent at least two months in a foreign country on (a) relative income gains, and (b) the odds of moving into the social class that gained most from the post-communist transformation, employers. In part of the analysis I treat the data as cross-sectional and use OLS regression with lag variables and correction for intra-group correlation. Due to methodological specificity of repeated measurement, I also use panel regression analysis. For both manifestations of individual success, results strongly support the hypothesis of the positive impact of international experience. They also show that international experience is especially valuable for Poles who acquired basic business skills during state socialism.