Labour Productivity in State-Owned Enterprises

Afonso, António; Guedes, Maria João; Patel, Pankaj

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3589880

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Labour Productivity in State-Owned Enterprises

REM Working Paper 0125-2020

19 Pages Posted: 4 Jun 2020

See all articles by António Afonso

António Afonso

ISEG Lisbon School of Economics and Management,Universidade de Lisboa; UECE (Research Unit on Complexity and Economics); REM - Research in Economics and Mathematics; University of Lisbon - ISEG School of Economics and Management

Maria João Guedes

Technical University of Lisbon (UTL) - School of Economics and Management

Pankaj Patel

Villanova University - School of Business

Date Written: April 30, 2020

Abstract

In the aftermath of the Global and Financial Crisis (GFC), between 2013 and 2015, the Portuguese government revoked four holidays for both public sector and private employees. We test whether the revocation had an effect on labour productivity in State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) in Portugal. Moreover, we also study whether such effects are different taking into account the SOEs managed by the Central Government or the Local and Regional Governments. Our results show that revocation of holidays did not impact labour productivity for either central or local and regional government managed SOEs. Though revocation of holidays espoused to improve productivity, the policy seems to have served a ceremonial purpose, but not an economic one.

Keywords: labour productivity; state-owned enterprises; central government; panel data; Portugal

JEL Classification: C23; H79; J45; J58; J89; L32

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Afonso, António and Guedes, Maria João and Patel, Pankaj, Labour Productivity in State-Owned Enterprises (April 30, 2020). REM Working Paper 0125-2020, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3589880 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3589880