IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ptu/wpaper/w201308.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Competition in the portuguese economy: Estimated price-cost margins under imperfect labour markets

Author

Listed:
  • Ana Cristina Soares
  • João Amador

Abstract

This article estimates price-cost margins for the Portuguese markets in a context of imperfect competition in the labour market. The database used includes virtually the universe of Portuguese firms for the period 2005-2009. The results strongly reject the hypothesis of perfect competition in both labour and product markets. Estimated price-cost margins are very heterogeneous across markets and the average for the overall economy ranges between 25 and 28 per cent, depending on the variables used to weight each market. In addition, the tradable sector presents a lower price-cost margin than the non-tradable sector. According to the methodology used, workers’ bargaining power in the ortuguese economy is approximately 13 per cent, without a clear istinction between tradable and non-tradable sectors. Finally, workers’ bargaining power is highly and positively correlated with price-cost margins across markets.

Suggested Citation

  • Ana Cristina Soares & João Amador, 2013. "Competition in the portuguese economy: Estimated price-cost margins under imperfect labour markets," Working Papers w201308, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.
    • Handle: RePEc:ptu:wpaper:w201308
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bportugal.pt/sites/default/files/anexos/papers/wp201308.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Antonio Bassanetti & Roberto Torrini & Francesco Zollino, "undated". "Changing Institutions in the European Market: the Impact on Mark-ups and Rents Allocation," Working Papers 11, Department of the Treasury, Ministry of the Economy and of Finance.
    2. Rebekka Christopoulou & Philip Vermeulen, 2012. "Markups in the Euro area and the US over the period 1981–2004: a comparison of 50 sectors," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 42(1), pages 53-77, February.
    3. Hervé Boulhol & Sabien Dobbelaere & Sara Maioli, 2011. "Imports as Product and Labour Market Discipline," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 49(2), pages 331-361, June.
    4. Lourdes Moreno & Diego Rodríguez, 2011. "Markups, Bargaining Power and Offshoring: An Empirical Assessment-super-1," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(9), pages 1593-1627, September.
    5. João Amador & Ana Cristina Soares, 2018. "Competition in the Portuguese economy: insights from a profit elasticity approach," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 45(2), pages 339-365, May.
    6. Dobbelaere, Sabien, 2004. "Estimation of price-cost margins and union bargaining power for Belgian manufacturing," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 22(10), pages 1381-1398, December.
    7. Hall, Robert E, 1988. "The Relation between Price and Marginal Cost in U.S. Industry," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(5), pages 921-947, October.
    8. Konings, Jozef & Vandenbussche, Hylke, 2005. "Antidumping protection and markups of domestic firms," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 151-165, January.
    9. repec:adr:anecst:y:2005:i:79-80:p:22 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Ana Cristina Soares & João Amador, 2012. "Competition in the Portuguese Economy:An overview of classical indicators," Working Papers w201208, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.
    11. Dunne, Paul & Hughes, Alan, 1994. "Age, Size, Growth and Survival: UK Companies in the 1980s," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(2), pages 115-140, June.
    12. Filip Abraham & Jozef Konings & Stijn Vanormelingen, 2009. "The effect of globalization on union bargaining and price-cost margins of firms," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 145(1), pages 13-36, April.
    13. Roeger, Werner, 1995. "Can Imperfect Competition Explain the Difference between Primal and Dual Productivity Measures? Estimates for U.S. Manufacturing," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(2), pages 316-330, April.
    14. Bruno Crépon & Rozen Desplatz & Jacques Mairesse, 2010. "Price-Cost Margins and Rent Sharing: Evidence from a Panel of French Manufacturing Firms," NBER Chapters, in: Contributions in Memory of Zvi Griliches, pages 583-610, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Ángel Estrada, 2009. "The mark-ups in the Spanish economy: international comparison and recent evolution," Working Papers 0905, Banco de España.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Paulo Bastos & Daniel A. Dias & Olga A. Timoshenko, 2018. "Learning, prices and firm dynamics," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 51(4), pages 1257-1311, November.
    2. Chrysovalantis Amountzias, 2018. "The Effects of Competition, Liquidity and Exports on Markups: Evidence from the UK Food and Beverages Sector," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 18(2), pages 187-208, June.
    3. Cristina Fernández & Aitor Lacuesta & José Manuel Montero & Alberto Urtasun, 2015. "Heterogeneity of markups at the firm level and changes during the great recession: the case of spain," Working Papers 1536, Banco de España.
    4. Ana Cristina Soares & João Amador, 2013. "Competition in the Portuguese Economy: Estimated Price-Cost Margins Under Imperfect Labour Markets," Economic Bulletin and Financial Stability Report Articles and Banco de Portugal Economic Studies, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.
    5. Daniel A. Dias & Carlos Robalo Marques & Christine Richmond, 2020. "A Tale of Two Sectors: Why is Misallocation Higher in Services than in Manufacturing?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 66(2), pages 361-393, June.
    6. Ana Gouveia & Sílvia Santos & Gustavo Monteiro, 2017. "Short-run effects of product markets’ deregulation: a more productive, more efficient and more resilient economy?," GEE Papers 0069, Gabinete de Estratégia e Estudos, Ministério da Economia, revised Mar 2017.
    7. Dias, Daniel A. & Robalo Marques, Carlos & Richmond, Christine, 2016. "Misallocation and productivity in the lead up to the Eurozone crisis," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 46-70.
    8. João Amador & Arne J. Nagengast, 2015. "The Effect of Bank Shocks on Firm-Level and Aggregate Investment," Working Papers w201515, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.
    9. Daniel Dias, 2016. "Comparing misallocation between sectors in Portugal," Economic Bulletin and Financial Stability Report Articles and Banco de Portugal Economic Studies, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.
    10. Luis Folque, 2016. "Practical contribution for the assessment and monitoring of product market competition in the Portuguese Economy – estimation of price cost margins," GEE Papers 0063, Gabinete de Estratégia e Estudos, Ministério da Economia, revised May 2016.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ana Cristina Soares & João Amador, 2013. "Competition in the Portuguese Economy: Estimated Price-Cost Margins Under Imperfect Labour Markets," Economic Bulletin and Financial Stability Report Articles and Banco de Portugal Economic Studies, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.
    2. Ana Cristina Soares, 2020. "Price-cost margin and bargaining power in the European Union," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 59(5), pages 2093-2123, November.
    3. João Amador & Ana Cristina Soares, 2017. "Markups and bargaining power in tradable and non-tradable sectors," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 53(2), pages 669-694, September.
    4. Carlos Figueira & Ricardo Pinheiro-Alves, 2023. "Evolution of price-cost margins during the troika intervention," Portuguese Economic Journal, Springer;Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestao, vol. 22(3), pages 315-351, September.
    5. Lourdes Moreno & Diego Rodríguez, 2011. "Markups, Bargaining Power and Offshoring: An Empirical Assessment-super-1," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(9), pages 1593-1627, September.
    6. João Amador & Ana Cristina Soares, 2018. "Competition in the Portuguese economy: insights from a profit elasticity approach," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 45(2), pages 339-365, May.
    7. Worku Gebeyehu, 2017. "Trade Reforms, Mark-Ups and Bargaining Power of Workers: the Case of Ethiopian Manufacturing Firms," Ethiopian Journal of Economics, Ethiopian Economics Association, vol. 25(01), March.
    8. Sabien Dobbelaere & Jacques Mairesse, 2010. "Comparing Micro-evidence on Rent Sharing from Three Different Approaches," NBER Working Papers 16220, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Dobbelaere, Sabien & Kiyota, Kozo & Mairesse, Jacques, 2015. "Product and labor market imperfections and scale economies: Micro-evidence on France, Japan and the Netherlands," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 290-322.
    10. Sabien Dobbelaere & Jacques Mairesse, 2013. "Panel data estimates of the production function and product and labor market imperfections," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(1), pages 1-46, January.
    11. Cristina Fernández & Aitor Lacuesta & José Manuel Montero & Alberto Urtasun, 2015. "Heterogeneity of markups at the firm level and changes during the great recession: the case of spain," Working Papers 1536, Banco de España.
    12. Chrysovalantis Amountzias, 2018. "The Effects of Competition, Liquidity and Exports on Markups: Evidence from the UK Food and Beverages Sector," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 18(2), pages 187-208, June.
    13. Michael L. Polemis & Panagiotis N. Fotis, 2016. "Measuring the Magnitude of Significant Market Power in the Manufacturing and Services Industries: A Cross Country Approach," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 16(1), pages 51-79, March.
    14. Dobbelaere, Sabien & Mairesse, Jacques, 2018. "Comparing micro-evidence on rent sharing from two different econometric models," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 18-26.
    15. Claire Giordano & Francesco Zollino, 2017. "Macroeconomic estimates of Italy's mark-ups in the long-run, 1861-2012," Quaderni di storia economica (Economic History Working Papers) 39, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    16. Chrysovalantis Amountzias, 2019. "Pricing Decisions and Competitive Conduct Across Manufacturing Sectors: Evidence from 19 European Union Manufacturing Industries," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 19(3), pages 413-440, September.
    17. Antonio Bassanetti & Roberto Torrini & Francesco Zollino, "undated". "Changing Institutions in the European Market: the Impact on Mark-ups and Rents Allocation," Working Papers 11, Department of the Treasury, Ministry of the Economy and of Finance.
    18. Stefano Schiavo & Lionel Nesta, 2017. "International Competition and Rent Sharing in French Manufacturing," DEM Working Papers 2017/07, Department of Economics and Management.
    19. Filip Abraham & Yannick Bormans & Jozef Konings & Werner Roeger, 2020. "Price-cost margins and fixed costs," Working Papers 202010, University of Liverpool, Department of Economics.
    20. Sabien Dobbelaere & Mark Vancauteren, 2014. "Market imperfections, skills and total factor productivity : Firm-level evidence on Belgium and the Netherlands," Working Paper Research 267, National Bank of Belgium.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • L10 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - General
    • L60 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Manufacturing - - - General
    • O50 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ptu:wpaper:w201308. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: DEE-NTD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bdpgvpt.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.