Competition and firm productivity: evidence from Portugal

• Author(s): Carvalho, Pedro Rodrigues
• Date: 2018
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/48475
• Origin: Repositório Institucional da UNL
• Subject(s): Competition; Productivity; Portugal
• Document Type: Master thesis
• Language: English
• Advisor(s): Barros, Pedro Pita; Santos, Vasco
• Contributor(s): RUN

Description

This master thesis presents empirical evidence on the impact of competition on firm productivity for the Portuguese economy. To that effect, firm-level panel data comprising information between 2010 and 2015 gathered from the Integrated Business Accounts System (Portuguese acronym: SCIE) is used. The database enables the construction of economic and financial indicators, which allow for isolating the impact of competition on firm-level productivity. We find a negative relationship between the Herfindahl-Hirschman index, which proxies competition, and both total factor productivity and labor productivity. This relationship is found to be robust to different specifications and in accordance with the results in the literature obtained for other countries.