Natália P. Monteiro

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.

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.

Rent Sharing in Portuguese Banking

Using the fixed e¤ects estimator and the dynamic panel data system-GMM estimator, on a sample of 75 banks, covering the period 1988-2005, this paper estimates how wages in the Portuguese banking sector depend on the employers ability to pay. The results indicate that wages are strongly positively correlated with pro?ts even after controlling for ?rm and workforce characteristics. The Lester?s range of wages due to rent-sharing is 46% - 75% of the mean wage in the Portuguese banking sector.

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

We analyse empirically whether cooperatives and investor-owned fims 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 diffferences in total factor productivity between the two groups of fi rms. The results from our benchmark random-effects model show that cooperatives are signi cantly less productive, on average, than investor-owned fi rms. This conclusion is to a large extent confi rmed by the results from System-GMM estimations. The lower productivity of cooperatives applies to a wide spectrum of industries. In six out of thirteen industries, cooperatives are outperformed by investor-owned firms in all empirical speci cations considered, while there is no industry in which cooperatives are consistently found to be the more productive type of firm.