The determinants of Portuguese salaries

• Autor(a) principal: Rodrigues, José Carlos Ruivo
• Data de Publicação: 2014
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/10162
• topic: Executive remuneration; Agency theory; Portugal; Labour economics theories; Remuneração dos executivos; Teoria da agência; Teorias de economia do trabalho

This research studies the determinants of executive´s remuneration in Portugal, resorting to the Human Capital Theory, the Mincer Equation and Agency Theory as background research. Given the lack of studies regarding Portuguese executive remuneration, this study gives an important contribution to Portuguese literature regarding this subject. The research was performed using data from 274 companies operating in Portugal in the year 2007 containing information about certain characteristics pertaining to 56000 observations on most white-collar employees. Two regression models were estimated using this data, collected by a Human Resources company, to verify the hypotheses formulated. The results obtained through the estimated models support the hypotheses formulated. Indeed, the education and experience of the executives are two important determinants of remuneration. Furthermore, the size of the companies is positively correlated with the executive remuneration: we expect that the higher the firm, the higher the remuneration. The company performance is also positively correlated with remuneration, which means that it is expected that higher performances lead to higher salaries.