Managers and Wage Policies

Do individual top managers matter for wages and wage policies? Are there general differences in “style” among managers with respect to worker compensation? To shed light on these questions, we exploit a large panel dataset from Portugal that allows us to match workers, firms, and managers, and follow the movements of the latter across different firms over time. While accounting for the effect of worker and firm heterogeneity, we estimate the role of top manager fixed effects in determining wages and wage policies. The estimates suggest that (i) top managers have a significant influence on wages and wage policies; (ii) there exists different managerial “styles”; and (iii) managers’ (observable) attributes matter for worker compensation.     

Linking corporate productivity to foreign direct investment: An empirical assessment

This paper examines whether foreign firms generate productivity spillovers. Despite the relevance of this question to public policy, previous studies have failed to find consistent and conclusive evidence to support the existence of positive spillovers. Using previously unexploited firm-level data over the 1994–1999 period, we attempt to contribute to the literature on productivity spillovers from FDI by analysing the Portuguese manufacturing industry. The results indicate that foreign firms in the same industry of the observed firms (horizontal spillovers) and linkages between foreign firms and their local suppliers or customers (vertical spillovers) do not impact significantly on firms’ productivity. Moreover, we detected no differences on productivity spillovers associated to firm-specific characteristics.     

ARE COOPERATIVES MORE PRODUCTIVE THAN INVESTOR‐OWNED FIRMS? CROSS‐INDUSTRY EVIDENCE FROM PORTUGAL

We analyse empirically whether cooperatives and investor‐owned firms differ in terms of productive efficiency. Using rich Portuguese panel data covering a wide range of industries, we apply two different empirical approaches to estimate potential differences in productive efficiency. The results from our benchmark random‐effects model show that cooperatives are significantly less productive, on average, than investor‐owned firms, both at the aggregate level and for most of the industries considered. However, the results derived from a System‐GMM approach, which is our preferred empirical strategy, are much less conclusive, and we cannot conclude that cooperatives are generally less efficient that investor‐owned firms. With either approach, though, we find no evidence that cooperatives are more productive than investor‐owned firms in any industry.     

Using propensity matching estimators to evaluate the impact of privatization on wages

Whether the transfer of ownership rights to the private sector leads to a decline or increase in wage growth is theoretically ambiguous, given that the outcome depends on the uncertain interaction between firms and workers. Using propensity matching techniques, this article investigates the effects of privatization on wages in the Portuguese banking industry. The empirical results, obtained from Quadros de Pessoal for the period between 1989 and 1997, generally show a negative (positive) short-run (long-run) effect of privatization on relative wage growth for both men and women retained in the privatized firms. Moreover, the results show that the most educated and experienced (oldest) workers, as well as those in the high skill occupational categories, were more likely to experience a negative wage effect.     

A conceptual framework to analyse hospital competitiveness

This article proposes a conceptual framework to analyse hospital competitiveness at the organisational level. Hospital competitiveness, defined as the capacity a hospital has to develop a superior performance that leads it to a position of competitive advantage, may be analysed in three dimensions: organisation, strategic behaviour, and performance. Based on previous studies and on the current structural adjustment in the Portuguese public hospital sector, this article suggests the following categories: legal status, organisational complexity, and resources for the organisation dimension; stakeholders, services and inter-organisational relationships for the strategic behaviour dimension; and type of indicators, efficiency and effectiveness, and benchmarking for the performance dimension. This framework seems to be particularly useful in evaluating Portuguese hospital competitiveness and providing insights for hospitals' managers and public decision makers both from Portugal and other countries.     

Human capital,innovation capability and economic growth in Portugal, 1960-2001

In maintaining that the main flaw in empirical studies on economic growth derives from the fact that they employ Solow-style neoclassical growth models, rather than testing actual endogenous growth theory, we examine the human capital-innovation-growth nexus, thus testing new growth theory more directly. We test its insights against the economic evolution of an individual country, Portugal, using time series data from 1960 to 2001. Estimates based on vector autoregressive and cointegration analysis seem to confirm that human capital and indigenous innovation efforts were enormously important to the economic growth process in Portugal during the period of study. In particular, the indirect effect of human capital through innovation, emerges here as being critical, showing that a reasonably high stock of human capital is necessary to enable a country to reap the benefits of its indigenous innovation efforts.Received: November 2003, Accepted: November 2004, JEL Classification: C22, J24, O30, O40 Correspondence to: Aurora A.C. TeixeiraThe authors are grateful to two anonymous referees, Paulo Brito and the participants of the 2003 Portuguese Society for Economics Research (SPiE) in Lisbon, Portugal for helpful comments and suggestions. CEMPRE - Centro de Estudos Macroeconómicos e Previsão - is supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Portugal, through the Programa Operacional Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação (POCTI) of the Quadro Comunitário de Apoio III, which is financed by FEDER and Portuguese funds.     

Impact of FDI and trade on environmental quality in the CAFTA-DR region

This study investigates the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI), trade and industrial emissions in member countries of the Central American Free Trade Agreement–Dominican Republic (CAFTA-DR) between 1979 and 2010. Our model is based on extant literature about the Environmental Kuznets’ Curve framework. In this study, we consider sulphur dioxide (SO₂), nitrogen oxides (NO_x) and carbon dioxide (CO₂) as our dependent variables. Our key independent variables are FDI and trade. Our study finds evidence that foreign investment and trade have had a negative impact on our selected emissions. However, our models also estimate turning points which are below the current GDP per capita values for all CAFTA-DR member countries. This is an encouraging trend in terms of the potential reduction in emissions in the region.     

Contingent Commissions,Insurance Intermediaries,and Insurer Performance

This research investigates the relationship shared by contingent commission usage and insurer performance. We assess performance using both frontier efficiency and financial performance measures. Our findings reveal that the relationship is complex and varies across differing insurer business models. We find that nonusers of contingent commissions are more cost and revenue efficient than are users of contingents. However, among insurers that use contingents, relatively higher levels of use are associated with more efficient operations and also better financial performance. Additionally, these findings are conditioned on the type of distribution system the insurer employs.