Evolution of price-cost margins during the troika intervention

Portuguese Economic Journal - Tập 22 - Trang 315-351 - 2022
Carlos Figueira1,2, Ricardo Pinheiro-Alves3,4
1Banco de Portugal, Lisbon, Portugal
2Nova School of Business and Economics, Lisbon, Portugal
3idD Portugal Defence, Lisbon, Portugal
4Universidade Lusíada, Lisbon, Portugal

Tóm tắt

Market competition is a key driver for an efficient allocation of resources and thus to sustained economic growth and higher aggregate welfare. Portugal implemented significant policy reforms during the difficult period 2010-2016 to improve the level of competition and flexibility in the product and labour markets. This paper measures price-cost margins in 190 markets during these years and the results present a stability pattern while providing evidence of imperfectly competitive markets. This seems to indicate that both the market power of firms and competition did not improve significantly during the period, although there was a reduction in the mark-ups of some non-manufacturing sectors, such as construction and other services. In addition, there was a sizeable decrease of the estimated parameter for labour market frictions in some services sectors, which may be interpreted as the policy reforms leading to a reduction in their workers’ bargaining power.

Tài liệu tham khảo

Abraham F, Konings J, Vanormelingen S (2009) The effect of globalization on union bargaining and price-cost margins of firms. Rev World Econ 1(145):13–36 Ackerberg DA, Caves K, Frazer G (2015) Identification properties of recent production function estimators. Econometrica 83(6):2411–2451 Aghion P, Bloom N, Blundel R et al (2005) Competition and innovation: An inverted-U relationship. Q J Econ 120(2):701–728 Amador J, Soares AC (2017) Markups and bargaining power in tradable and non-tradable sectors. Empirical Economics 53(2):669–694 Bain JS (1951) Relation of profit rate to industry concentration: American manufacturing, 1936–1940. Q J Econ 65(3):293–324 Bajgar M, Berlingieri G, Calligaris S, et al (2019) Industry concentration in Europe and North America. OECD Productivity Working Papers (18). https://doi.org/10.1787/2ff98246-en, https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/content/paper/2ff98246-en Bassanetti A, Torrini R, Zollino F (2010) Changing institutions in the European market: the impact on mark-ups and rents allocation. Bank of Italy Temi di Discussione (Working Paper) 781 Berry S, Levinsohn J, Pakes A (1995) Automobile prices in market equilibrium. Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society 63(4):841–890 Bottini N, Molnár M (2011) How large are competitive pressures in services markets? Estimation of mark-ups for selected OECD countries. OECD Journal: Economic Studies 2010(1):1–51 Boulhol H (2005) Pro-competitive policies and the convergence of markups. Cahiers de la Maison des Sciences Economiques 200519 - ISSN : 1624-0340 Breusch TS, Pagan AR (1979) A simple test for heteroscedasticity and random coefficient variation. Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society pp 1287–1294 Bundesbank D (2017) Mark-ups of firms in selected European countries. Monthly Report December 2017 pp 53–67 Calligaris S, Criscuolo C, Marcolin L (2018) Mark-ups in the digital era. OECD Science, Technology and Industry Working Papers 2018(10). https://doi.org/10.1787/4efe2d25-en, https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/content/paper/4efe2d25-en Cameron A, Trivedi P (2009) Microeconometrics using stata, vol 5. Stata press College Station, TX Chevalier J, Scharfstein D (1996) Capital-Market imperfections and countercyclical markups: Theory and evidence. Am Econ Rev 86(4):703–25 Christopoulou R, Vermeulen P (2012) Markups in the Euro area and the US over the period 1981–2004: a comparison of 50 sectors. Empir Econ 42(1):53–77 Cook RD, Weisberg S (1983) Diagnostics for heteroscedasticity in regression. Biometrika 70(1):1–10 Crépon B, Desplatz R, Mairesse J (2005) Price-cost margins and rent sharing: Evidence from a panel of French manufacturing firms. Ann Econ Stat 79–80:583–610 De Loecker J, Fuss C, Van Biesebroeck J (2018) Markup and price dynamics: linking micro to macro. National Bank of Belgium, Working Paper No 357 Demsetz H (1973) Industry structure, market rivalry, and public policy. J Law Econ 16(1):1–9 Dias DA, Marques CR, Richmond C (2016) Misallocation and productivity in the lead up to the Eurozone crisis. J Macroecon 49:46–70 Dobbelaere S (2004) Estimation of price-cost margins and union bargaining power for Belgian manufacturing. Int J Ind Organ 10(22):1381–1398 Dobbelaere S, Boulhol H, Maioli S (2006) Imports as product and labor market discipline. IZA Discussion Papers Series 2178:1–25 Dobrinsky R, Halpern L, Korosi G, et al (2004) Firms’ price markups and returns to scale in imperfect markets: Bulgaria and Hungary. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=600661 or http://dxdoi.org/102139/ssrn600661 Dunne P, Hughes A (1994) Age, size, growth and survival: UK companies in the 1980s. J Ind Econ 42(2):115–140 Estrada Á (2009) The mark-ups in the Spanish economy: International comparison and recent evolution. Banco de España Working Papers 0905 Feenstra RC, Weinstein DE (2010) Globalization, markups, and the US price level. National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge Gandhi A, Navarro S, Rivers D, et al (2017) How heterogeneous is productivity? A comparison of gross output and value added. J Polit Econ, forthcoming Goldberg PK (1995) Product differentiation and oligopoly in international markets: The case of the US automobile industry. Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society 63(4):891–951 Griffith R, Harisson R (2004) The link between product market reform and macro-economic performance. European Economy - Economic Papers 2008 - 2015 209, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission, https://ideas.repec.org/p/euf/ecopap/0209.html Gutiérrez G, Philippon T (2017) Declining competition and investment in the US. Working Paper 23583, National Bureau of Economic Research. http://www.nber.org/papers/w23583 Gutiérrez G, Philippon T (2018) How EU markets became more competitive than US markets: A study of institutional drift. Working Paper 24700, National Bureau of Economic Research. http://www.nber.org/papers/w24700 Hall R (1988) The relation between price and marginal cost in U.S. Industry. J Polit Econ 96(5):921–947 Hall RE, Jorgenson DW (1967) Tax policy and investment behavior. Am Econ Rev 57(3):391–414 Hoechle D (2007) Robust standard errors for panel regressions with cross-sectional dependence. Stand Genomic Sci 7(3):281–312 Karabarbounis L, Neiman B (2019) Accounting for factorless income. NBER Macroecon Annu 33(1):167–228 Konings J, Vandenbussche H (2005) Antidumping protection and markups of domestic firms. J Int Econ 65(1):151–165 Levinsohn J (1993) Testing the imports-as-market-discipline hypothesis. J Int Econ 35(1–2):1–22 McAdam P, Cavalleri MC, Eliet A, et al (2019) Concentration, market power and dynamism in the euro area. ECB Working Paper 2253 Meijerink G, van Heuvelen GH, Bettendorf L (2019) Estimating markups in the Netherlands. CPB Background Document March 2019 OECD (2001) Measuring capital OECD manual: Measurement of capital stocks. OECD Publications Service, Consumption of Fixed Capital and Capital Services Olley GS, Pakes A (1996) The dynamics of productivity in the telecommunications equipment industry. Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society 64(6):1263–1297 Reis R (2013) The Portuguese slump and crash and the euro crisis. Working Paper 19288, National Bureau of Economic Research Roeger W (1995) Can Imperfect Competition explain the difference between primal and dual productivity measures? Estimates for U.S. Manufacturing. J Polit Econ 103(2):316–330 Rogers W (1993) Regression standard errors in clustered samples. Stata Technical Bulletin 3(13):19–23 Sim J, Schoenle R, Zakrajsek E, et al (2013) Inflation dynamics during the financial crisis. In: 2013 Meeting Papers, Society for Economic Dynamics Solow R (1957) Technical change and the aggregate production function. Rev Econ Stat 39:312–320 Thum-Thysen A, Canton E (2015) Estimation of service sector mark-ups determined by structural reform indicators. European Economy Economic Papers 2015, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Comission Weche JP, Wambach A (2018) The fall and rise of market power in Europe. ZEW-Centre for European Economic Research Discussion Paper 18-003 White H (1980) A heteroskedasticity-consistent covariance matrix estimator and a direct test for heteroskedasticity. Econometrica 48(4):817–38 Wooldridge JM (2002) Econometric analysis of cross section and panel data. Cambridge, MA: MIT press 108