Publicação
Measuring the Impact of Regulatory Costs in Portuguese Firms Productivity: A Quantile Regression Approach
| Resumo: | With a focus on small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs), which constitute the great majority of the country's business environment, this thesis examines how regulatory costs affect firm productivity in Portugal. The diverse impacts of regulatory burdens across the productivity distribution are still not well understood, even though they are increasingly acknowledged as important external factors affecting firm performance. This study fills this gap by applying a quantile regression framework to a matched panel dataset that combines subjective regulatory burden assessments from the IaCC survey with objective firm-level data from SCIE and QP. A weighted index of perceived regulatory costs and capital and labor inputs are included in the empirical analysis, which is based on an extended Cobb-Douglas production function. The findings consistently show a negative and significant relationship between productivity and regulatory burdens across the distribution, with the effect's magnitude growing at higher productivity quantiles. Contrary to the widely held belief that smaller or less productive firms are the most vulnerable, this pattern implies that more productive firms are disproportionately constrained by regulatory environments. The stability of the results is confirmed by robustness checks, which include expanded controls, transformations, and alternative scaling. Significant variations in sensitivity to regulatory burdens are also revealed by disaggregated analyses by year, sector, and firm age. These results highlight the need for distinct regulatory policies that take firm heterogeneity into account and advance a more nuanced understanding of the institutional determinants of productivity. This study contributes to the literature on firm-level productivity and regulatory economics in the context of a small open economy by connecting microeconomic data with macro-institutional variables. |
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| Autores principais: | Tátá, Sofia Isabel Craveiro |
| Assunto: | Regulatory Costs Productivity Cobb-Douglas Quantile Regression Heterogeneous Effects SDG 8 - Decent work and economic growth SDG 9 - Industry, innovation and infrastructure SDG 10 - Reduced inequalities SDG 12 - Responsible production and consumption SDG 16 - Peace, justice and strong institutions SDG 17 - Partnerships for the goals |
| Ano: | 2025 |
| País: | Portugal |
| Tipo de documento: | dissertação de mestrado |
| Tipo de acesso: | acesso aberto |
| Instituição associada: | Universidade Nova de Lisboa |
| Idioma: | inglês |
| Origem: | Repositório Institucional da UNL |
| Resumo: | With a focus on small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs), which constitute the great majority of the country's business environment, this thesis examines how regulatory costs affect firm productivity in Portugal. The diverse impacts of regulatory burdens across the productivity distribution are still not well understood, even though they are increasingly acknowledged as important external factors affecting firm performance. This study fills this gap by applying a quantile regression framework to a matched panel dataset that combines subjective regulatory burden assessments from the IaCC survey with objective firm-level data from SCIE and QP. A weighted index of perceived regulatory costs and capital and labor inputs are included in the empirical analysis, which is based on an extended Cobb-Douglas production function. The findings consistently show a negative and significant relationship between productivity and regulatory burdens across the distribution, with the effect's magnitude growing at higher productivity quantiles. Contrary to the widely held belief that smaller or less productive firms are the most vulnerable, this pattern implies that more productive firms are disproportionately constrained by regulatory environments. The stability of the results is confirmed by robustness checks, which include expanded controls, transformations, and alternative scaling. Significant variations in sensitivity to regulatory burdens are also revealed by disaggregated analyses by year, sector, and firm age. These results highlight the need for distinct regulatory policies that take firm heterogeneity into account and advance a more nuanced understanding of the institutional determinants of productivity. This study contributes to the literature on firm-level productivity and regulatory economics in the context of a small open economy by connecting microeconomic data with macro-institutional variables. |
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