Almeida the Labor

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The labor market effects of foreign owned firms

Rita Almeida

The World Bank, United States

Received 15 March 2004; received in revised form 28 September 2006; accepted 31 October 2006

Abstract

Foreign firms have a more educated workforce and pay higher wages than domestic firms even after

controlling for worker quality, at a given moment in time. This does not imply that foreign ownership

improves the labor market outcomes of the workers since foreign investment may be guided by unobservable

firm and worker characteristics correlated with schooling or wages. This paper asks whether foreign investors

acquire firms with high human capital or wages, or whether foreign acquisition improves these outcomes.

Using a matched employeremployee data set, I find that foreign acquisitions of domestic firms have small

effects on the human capital and on average wages of the acquired firms. Instead, foreign investors cherry

pick those domestic firms that are already very similar to the group of existing foreign firms.

2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Foreign direct investment; Acquisitions; Employment; Wage structure; Panel data

JEL classification: C31; F23; J31

1. Introduction

A large empirical literature documents that, in the cross-section, foreign firms are larger, more

productive, more capital intensive, pay higher wages and have a more skilled workforce than

Journal of International Economics 72 (2007) 7596

www.elsevier.com/locate/econbase

I am very grateful to Antonio Ciccone for raising my interest in the topic and for his guidance and to Pedro Carneiro for

very valuable comments. I am also very grateful to the editor and two anonymous referees for many detailed comments that

substantially improved the paper. I am grateful to the Department of Statistics of the Portuguese Ministry of Employment for

access to the data. I thank Koen Debacker, Jaume Garcia, Maia Gell, Adriana Kugler andJos Mata forseveral suggestions.

I benefited from comments made at the Spie, UPF, Simposio de Analisis Economico, UNL, CEPR conference

Globalization and labor markets(Bergen), World Bank and IIOC (Chicago). All the errors are my own. I gratefully

acknowledge the financial support ofFundao para a Cincia e Tecnologia

. 1818 H Street, NW, MSN MC3-301, Washington, DC 20433, USA.

E-mail address: [email protected].

0022-1996/$ - see front matter 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.jinteco.2006.10.001
mailto:[email protected]://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jinteco.2006.10.001http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jinteco.2006.10.001mailto:[email protected]


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domestic firms. This suggests that foreign investors may have a positive effect on the welfare of

the workforce of the host economy. This argument has been used to justify regional or national

industrial policies to attract and secure foreign investment. But, while cross-sectional differences

are large, they are not necessarily causal. For example, they may arise because foreigners acquiredomestic firms that already have a more educated workforce and pay higher wages than the

average firm, because foreign investment leads to an increase in the demand for skills and average

wages of the acquired firms, or both. Disentangling correlation from causality is crucial for

understanding the welfare effects of foreign investment in the host economy and for designing

appropriate policies.

In this paper, I analyze the interaction between foreign ownership and labor market outcomes

using a Portuguese matched employeremployee data set during the nineties. The paper

addresses the following questions: (1) Do foreigners acquire domestic firms with high human

capital and that pay higher wages even after controlling for worker quality? (2) Does foreign

ownership improve the labor market outcomes of the acquired firms? To quantify the effects offoreign ownership, I analyze the evolution in total employment, human capital of the workforce

and average wages conditional on worker quality following a foreign acquisition of a domestic

firm.1 The main findings of the paper can be summarized as follows. Most of the large cross

sectional differences between foreign and domestic firms are explained by foreigners cherry

picking the domestic firms. In the years prior to the acquisition, firms that will become

acquired are already larger, employ a more educated workforce and pay higher hourly wages for

a given worker quality (both to low and high educated workers) than the average domestic firm

in the sector. Moreover, before the foreign acquisition firms are already very similar to the group

of existing foreign firms. Consistently with the few theories of foreign acquisitions, these

findings strongly suggest that foreign acquisitions are not random. When foreign firms enter anew country and/or a new product market, by acquiring an existing firm it is more likely that

they choose firms with relatively high productivity and with technological characteristics that

are similar to their own (Hennart and Park, 1993; Buckley and Casson, 1998). Otherwise,

foreigners would face very high costs of adapting the technology, changing the workforce and

gaining experience in the host country. In Portugal the costs of adjusting the workforce are

particularly high since it has one of the most restrictive employment protection regulations in

the world. I also find evidence that the change in the nationality of the ownership has little effect

on different labor market outcomes of the acquired firms. By comparing the same firms before

and after the acquisition, I find that following the acquisition the size of the firm increases but

that there is no significant change in the human capital of the average worker in the firm. 2

Moreover, there is evidence that following the acquisition average wages increase slightly in

manufacturing firms but these results are in stark contrast with the large cross sectional

estimates of the foreign wage premium. Suggestive evidence shows that this might not be

specific to foreign acquisitions since wages go up by similar magnitudes following domestic

acquisitions.

The Portuguese case is interesting because it combines two important features. First, Portugal

had a permissive legal framework for the operation of foreign firms that translated into substantial

1 Other papers have used foreign acquisitions to quantify the foreign wage premium (e.g., Aitken et al., 1996; Conyon

et al., 2002a; Lipsey and Sjoholm, 2002). See Navaretti and Venables (2004) for a survey.2 I find that employment in the firm increases on average by 14% following the foreign acquisition. However, this

evidence should be interpreted cautiously since there is also evidence of selection of foreign investment into firms where

employment was growing faster prior to the acquisition.

76 R. Almeida / Journal of International Economics 72 (2007) 7596


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amounts of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the late eighties and nineties. Before becoming an

European Union member in 1986, the amount of FDI in Portugal had never reached 1% of GDP

(3.2% of total investment) and in the beginning of the nineties this influx had more than tripled to

3.2% of GDP (12% of total investment in 1990).

3

Second, there exists a census of all the firmsoperating in Portugal covering the nineties. For each firm in this data set, foreign participation can

be traced over time so that the identification of foreign acquisitions of domestic firms is possible.

Moreover, since it is a matched employeremployee data set, workforce characteristics can also

be traced over time making this data particularly well suited for the analysis of the effects of

foreign ownership on labor market outcomes.

One of the contributions of the paper is to provide a systematic evaluation of the impact of

foreign investment on different labor market outcomes of workers in the host country. While

there is some evidence for the UK that foreigners buy domestic firms with above average

productivity and wages, little is known about the human capital characteristics of firms that are

acquired by foreigners (e.g., Harris and Robinson, 2002; Girma and Grg, 2003a,b; Conyonet al., 2002a).4 There is also evidence that following a foreign acquisition average wages

increase slightly but it is unclear whether this is the result of worker reallocation and changes in

the firm's human capital or as a result of increases in labor productivity (e.g., Conyon et al.,

2002a; Girma and Grg, 2003a,b). The main reason for this lack of knowledge is the difficulty

in obtaining datasets that simultaneously have information on characteristics of the firm and of

its workforce over time. Using a sample of Indonesian manufacturing firms Lipsey and Sjoholm

(2002) focus on the evolution of employment and average wages within broad skill groups

following a foreign acquisition.5 The Portuguese data has the advantage of covering both

manufacturing and non-manufacturing sectors and to have, for each year, detailed information

on all wage earners in the private sector. Since each individual is uniquely matched with a firm,several workforce characteristics are observed for each firm. Interestingly, my findings for

foreign acquisitions in Portugal are closer to those found for the UK and are quite different from

those found by Lipsey and Sjoholm (2002) for Indonesia. Lipsey and Sjoholm (2002) do not

find evidence of selection of foreign investment into high wage firms and show that following

the acquisition average wages increase substantially, possibly due to increases in productivity.6

They also show that the employment of blue collar workers and average wages within

occupations increase after the acquisition. The stark contrast with my findings suggest that the

effects of foreign acquisitions in the labor markets in developed and developing countries can be

quite different.

My paper is also related with the literature that investigates the foreign wage premium (seeTable A.1 in the appendix for a summary). If foreigners are in a disadvantaged position to attract

the best workers, they would have to pay higher wages than comparable domestic firms with

3 The most important sources of FDI into Portugal is the European Union and OECD, with 76% and 89% of the FDI in

1992.4 Harris and Robinson (2002) and Girma and Grg (2003a,b) find evidence ofcherry picking of foreign investment

into UK firms with a high level and growth of productivity. Conyon et al. (2002a) also find evidence that acquired firms

pay above average wages.5 Table A1 shows that Lipsey and Sjoholm (2002) have information on average wages for blue and white collar

workers but they do not have information on schooling or other worker characteristics. Lipsey and Sjoholm (2004) have

information on schooling but it is only available in 1996.6 Arnold and Javorcik (2005) find evidence for Indonesian plants that foreign ownership leads to an increase in

productivity in the acquired plants by approximately 30% over the three years following the acquisition. In contrast,

Harris and Robinson (2002) find that for the UK, average firm productivity falls in the short run following a foreign

acquisition.

77R. Almeida / Journal of International Economics 72 (2007) 7596


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similar worker quality.7 I am also motivated by the evaluation of the effects of acquisitions on

labor reallocation. Ownership changes are often associated with the real-location of resources

from inefficient to efficient firms. This can cause the displacement of jobs and lower wages and it

is a source of preoccupation for workers and labor unions (e.g., Harris and Robinson, 2002).Furthermore, firm acquisitions may change the allocation of monopoly rents between firms and

workers which can also lead to wage changes (McGuckin and Nguyen, 2001). Finally, my work

also relates to the literature that studies the profile of firms acquired by foreigners, and the motives

for a foreign acquisition of a domestic firm.

The paper proceeds as follows. In the next section, I describe the data and the sample used.

Section 3 presents evidence on how much better foreign-owned firms look at any point in time

and asks whether foreigners select the best domestic firms to be acquired. Section 4 analyzes the

effects of foreign acquisitions on different labor market outcomes. Section 5 discusses the

robustness of the results. Section 6 concludes.

2. Data

The data set used is a based on a mandatory yearly survey conducted by the Portuguese

Ministry of Employment, Quadros do Pessoal. The survey covers all the firms with wage-earners

in Portugal excluding the public sector. It is a matched employeremployee data where firms can

be traced over time and each period workers can be matched to firms.8 The survey collects firm

information on the ownership of the capital (foreign, domestic private and public), five digit-ISIC

sector, region, size and age of the firm. It also reports detailed worker characteristics like gender,

age, schooling, tenure on the job, monthly hours worked (normal and extra hours) and gross

monthly wage.To construct the sample, I identified all the firms that changed the nationality of their

ownership during the period covered 19911998.9 I consider a firm to be foreign owned if the

share of foreign capital is larger than 10%.10 I selected all the firms that are continuously owned

by domestic and foreign owners. I kept only those firms that report information on key variables

in the paper like wages, hours worked and schooling. I identify 1381 firms that change the

nationality of their ownership between 1991 and 1998, of which 688 are foreign acquisitions

(domestic firms acquired by foreigner firms) and 505 domestic acquisitions (foreign firms

7 There are different reasons for foreigners paying higher wages (e.g., Navaretti and Venables, 2004). First, workers

could have a preference for domestic firms. This could happen if, for example, foreign firms are perceived to be morevolatile employers. There is little evidence supporting this claim, though. Second, foreigners might be more likely to

minimize turnover if they invest more in training or want to avoid the leakage of their technological advantages. Third, a

foreigners might be interested in attracting the best workers.8 By law the information collected is sent to the Ministry of Employment and latter is made available to all the workers

in the firm. Since the data is administrative and it is made available it tends to be very reliable. The survey has been

conducted since 1982 and is organized in firm, plant and individual files. The firm level data covers 148,044 firms in

1991 and 224,456 in 1998. The individual files cover approximately 2 million workers each year.9 Some observations report missing information on the ownership structure of the capital. I tested the robustness of the

results to excluding these firms and to make different assumptions on the nationality of the capital. Firms observed just

once are assumed to be domestic firms, given its similarity in size, education and average wages to the average domestic

firm in the same sector. Firms observed more than once, are assumed that they kept either their last ownership structure or

an average of the past ownership's structure (more than 95% of these firms are assumed to be domestic). Since I suspect

measurement error problems for those firms with more than one ownership change, these firms were excluded from the

sample (less than 3% of the acquisitions).10 The choice of the 10% threshold is not restrictive since 95% (75%) of the firms with positive foreign ownership have

more than 10% (50%) of foreign capital and 50% of the firms with a foreign participation have a full foreign ownership.



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acquired by domestic firms).11 About 90% of the acquisitions in the sample are observed for three

or more periods.12

Since I am interested in analyzing the effects of foreign ownership on firm's characteristics of

the workforce, I aggregate these at the firm level. This aggregation is possible because eachworker has a unique firm identifier. I consider a worker to be low educated if it has nine or less

years of schooling and a worker to be high educated if it has more than nine years of schooling.13

Gross monthly wages are computed summing up monthly labor earnings for regular and extra

work hours. Hourly wages are gross wages divided by total monthly hours worked. Firm average

wages are computed excluding extreme values for hourly wages.14 The price cost margin is

defined as total sales minus total labor costs divided by total sales.15 The consumer price index

comes from National Department of Statistics. The level of aggregation used for sector

composition was two-digit ISIC sector (total 46 sectors).

3. Evidence on selection of foreign investment

In this section I document the differences between foreign and domestic owned firms and

examine whether firms that become acquired by foreigners have an average worker with a very

different quality than the typical domestic firm. The latter is important to understand the

motivations for foreign entry. Moreover, there is almost no evidence in the literature on the human

capital profile of the average worker in acquired firms. This is important since foreign firms are

often associated with a better technology and a more intensive use of skilled labor than domestic

firms. However, this need not translate into an increase in the employment of skilled workers, as

long as foreigners acquire firms that already have the desired worker profile.

Looking at the theoretical and empirical literature on mergers and acquisitions it is difficult toextract strong predictions about the profile of the acquired firm and its post acquisition

performance. This literature has identified two motives for acquisitions independently of the

nationality of the acquiring firm. The neoclassical approach views acquisitions as a form of

natural selection motivated by profit maximizing managers which result in the replacement of

inefficient firms (Lichtenberg and Seigel, 1987, 1990).16 Alternatively, acquisitions could be

made by managers motivated to acquire operating efficiency (McGuckin and Nguyen, 1995). In

11 Domestic firms are firms with at least 90% of national capital each year, foreign firms are firms with at least 10% of

foreign capital each year and acquisitions are firms that changed once their ownership nationality over the sample period.In the final sample there are 194,560 domestic firms, 2350 foreign firms and 1381 acquisitions. In the manufacturing

sample, there are 40,873 domestic firms, 701 foreign firms and 205 foreign acquisitions of domestic firms.12 81% and 72% of the foreign acquisitions are observed one year before and one year after the acquisition, respectively.

About 50% and 52% of the foreign acquisitions are observed two years before and two years after the acquisition,

respectively.13 I prefer the aggregation by education groups rather than by occupational groups since it is less ambiguous and also

less likely to be affected by ownership changes. In the worker level data there is a positive correlation between education

and skills: 84% of the high educated are skilled workers and 40% of the low educated are unskilled workers.14 Workers with implausibly low earnings (hourly wage lower than 50% of the minimum wage) or implausibly high

earnings were excluded from the sample. There were less than 1% of the workers in each years in these cases.15 Unfortunately, the Portuguese data does not collect sufficient information to compute firm's productivity. It collects

information on total sales but there is no information on raw materials or stock of capital in the firm. Approximately 9%

of the firms in the sample report zero sales and hence do not have a price cost margin. I exclude from the analysis those

firms with values below percentile 1 and above percentile 99 of the distribution for price cost margin.16 This theory also predicts that firms will perform better after the acquisition since they are disciplined by managers

with cost savings policies.



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this case, firms with high levels of productivity are more likely to change ownership.17 The

empirical literature also shows different results. Lichtenberg and Seigel (1987, 1990) and Conyon

et al. (2002b) find that firms with lower productivity or profits are more likely to be acquired by

domestic firms, in the US and UK, respectively. Ravenscraft and Scherer (1987), Matsusaka(1993) and McGuckin and Nguyen (1995) find for the US that the more profitable and high

productivity firms are more likely to change ownership.18

The theory looking at the motivations of foreign acquisitions is more scarce but less

ambiguous. Markusen (1995) shows that foreign firms prefer to establish capacity in the host

country, in opposition to export or technology licensing, whenever firms have specific advantages

that overcome the costs of entry. Caves (1996) and Pfaffermayr (1999) relate these advantages to

economies of scale, brand names, management know-how and other types of advantages that can

be exploited in different locations without incurring in additional costs. The literature on the

motivations of the different entry modes argues that foreign firms are more likely to acquire an

existing firm rather than start a new firm if they have little experience in producing in the hostcountry and learning costs are high, if they are entering a new product market or if there are high

costs of increasing competition (Hennart and Park, 1993; Buckley and Casson, 1998). Moreover,

conditional on choosing to acquire, foreign firms are more likely to buy domestic firms with

relatively high productivity and with technological characteristics that are similar to their own.

Otherwise, foreigners firms would face very high costs of adapting the technology, changing the

workforce or of gaining experience in the host country.

In Portugal, the costs of adapting the workforce are particularly important since it has one of the

most restrictive employment protection regulations in the world. The legislation on collective

dismissals imposes a long, complex and very costly dismissal process on employers. In particular,

the employer must justify a worker's dismissal. The employer must also notify the impendingdismissal to the commission of workers as well as the Ministry of Employment. The dismissal will

only become official after the commission issued an appraisal and after the worker is given the

opportunity to dispute the allegations made. Dismissed workers must receive a written notice at least

60 days prior to the dismissal. These workers then have certain benefits, which include time off to

look for a new job, a financial compensation and a special right to resign. Except in the case of a

disciplinary dismissal (serious infraction by the worker), the employer must pay the employee one

monthly wage per year worked, with a minimum of three monthly payments. No maximum ceiling is

established in the law for the severance payments. However, Portugal has a relatively flexible wage

policy. The minimum wage is set annually at the national level and collective bargaining agreements

establish the starting wage for each occupation. These wage floors are established at relatively lowlevels so that, in practice, employers have some flexibility in setting the wages. ( Bover et al., 1998,

discuss in detail the Portuguese labor regulation). Together, these arguments suggest that in my

sample, when foreigners choose to enter the market by acquiring an existing firm, they tend to select

those firms that already have many of the characteristics that are desirable to them.

17 Theoretical models also yield conflicting predictions for firm performance in the period following the acquisition.

When acquisitions are motivated by managerial discipline, some models predict that firm performance improves

following the acquisition. When acquisitions are motivated by the acquisition of operating efficiency, models predict that

firm performance remains unchanged or decreases slightly following the acquisition. A negative performance could be

more likely to occur with foreign acquisitions, where assimilation problems could potentially be larger.18 Ravenscraft and Scherer (1987) and Matsusaka (1993) show that firms and had little or no gain in productivity in the

post-acquisition period. Conyon et al. (2002b) look specifically at the evolution of employment following a change in

ownership. They find that acquisitions are generally followed by reductions in employment and output resulting in an

increased efficiency in the use of labor.



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The empirical analysis of foreign acquisitions for developed countries is focused on the UK

and finds that acquiring foreign firms cherry pick domestic firms. However, nothing is known

about the human capital of firms acquired by foreigners. For example, in the procedure of

selection of foreign investment into firms with more educated workers, these firms would payhigher average wages in the pre acquisition period but would not necessarily pay higher wages

conditional on worker's schooling. Alternatively, if selection of foreign investment is also based

on unobservable firm characteristics (e.g., technological or organizational advantages) average

wages for a given worker quality would already be higher in the pre acquisition period. One way

of testing for selection of foreign investment, is to compare firms that will become acquired by

foreigners, existing foreign firms and domestic owned firms that will not be acquired in the near

future.19 I estimate the following equation for different outcomes:

yjt bAj dFjXS

s1

gsDs XT

t1

gtDt jt 3:1

whereyjtis the outcome of interest for firmjin period t(employment, average schooling, age, tenure,

share of females in the firm, average hourly wage and pricecost margin),Aj is a dummy variable that

assumes the value one in the years before the acquisition for those firms that will be acquired by

foreigners,Fjis a dummy variable that assumes the value one if firmjis foreign owned in yeartandDsis a two digit sector dummy andDt is a time dummy for yeart. The foreign premium , represents the

average difference in outcomeybetween foreign and domestic firms in the same sector of activity and

year. If (future) foreign acquisitions are already better performers relatively to domestic firms in the

years prior to the acquisition,should be large and statistically significant. Moreover, if future foreign

acquisitions are very similar to existing foreign firms, I expect to see to be very similar to . On theother hand, if foreigners do notcherry pick domestic firms, should be small and different from .

However, one would expect foreign firms to pay higher hourly wages simply because their

workforce has a different human capital composition than the workforce in domestic firms.

Mincer (1974), and a large literature that followed, shows that differences in education, age,

tenure and gender are associated with significant differences in hourly wages. Hence, when the

dependent variable in Eq. (3.1) is average hourly wages, I also control for differences across firms

in average education, age, tenure and gender of the workers, so that the wage premiums captured

by and exclude these composition effects.20 Eq. (3.1) is estimated by least squares using all

the firms. Standard errors are clustered at the firm level. The estimates are reported in columns (1)

to (10) of Table 1. The table also reports the p-values for the test: =.I start by examining how foreign owned firms differ from the average firm in the same sector. In the

sample, foreign firms are approximately twice the size of a domestic firms, but do not have more

average hours of work per worker. The average years of schooling is almost two years higher than in a

domestic firm of the same sector. The workforce in foreign owned firms is, on average, less than 1 year

younger and the share of females is 3 percentage points higher than the workforce in domestic firms.

19 An alternative way to test for selection is to estimate a probit model for the event of being acquired. This approach has

been used by Clerides et al. (1998) to document selection of exporting firms. Using this approach the sign of the effect of

each variable on the probability of being acquired would be the same as the sign in Table 1 (not reported).20 The estimated model is identical to the one reported in Eq. (3.1) where the dependent variable is the logarithm of real

hourly wages per employee in firm j. The only difference is that I also control for Xjt, a vector of workforce

characteristics including average years of schooling, average age, average job tenure and share of females in the

workforce. A similar model is used to estimate the foreign wage premium for each education group. The only difference

is that average wages and worker characteristics are relative the each education group.



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Table1

Differencesbetweenfutureforeignacquisitionsand

foreignownedfirmsrelativelytodomesticfirms

Employment

Hourswork/

totalworkers

Yearsof

schooling

Age

workforce

Tenure

workforce

Females/

totalworkers

Average

hourly

wag

e

Loweducated

hourlywage

Higheducated

hourlywage

Price-cost

margin

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

(6)

(7)

(8)

(9)

(10)

Futureforeign

acquisitions

0.85

0.0000

1.6

5

1.37

1.0

7

0.02

0.32

0.2

4

0.40

0.001

[0.0

62]

[0.0

04]

[0.0

97]

[0.2

53]

[0.2

20]

[0.0

10]

[0.014]

[0.0

13]

[0.0

17]

[0.0

01]

Foreignfirms

1.05

0.0003

1.9

3

0.66

0.0

1

0.03

0.40

0.3

2

0.48

0.0

00

[0.0

30]

[0.0

02]

[0.0

43]

[0.1

20]

[0.1

08]

[0.0

04]

[0.006]

[0.0

06]

[0.0

08]

[0.0

00]

Sectordummie

sincluded?

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Timedummies

included?

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Av.schooling,

age,tenure,

sh.

Females

included?

No

No

No

No

No

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Ftest:Futureforeignacquisitions=

Foreignfirm

s(Pvalue)

0.00

0.7

5

0.0

0

0.00

0.0

0

0.25

0.00

0.0

0

0.00

0.0

4

N

647,984

647,9

84

647,9

84

647,984

647,9

84

647,984

647,9

84

616,4

91

256,9

37

579,2

88

Rsquared

0.22

0.0

6

0.4

0

0.11

0.0

6

0.47

0.43

0.3

9

0.39

0.1

7

Thenumbersin

column(1)representthecoefficients

ofaregressionoflogemploymentonadummyvariableifafirmwillbeco

meacquiredbyforeignersandonadummyvariable

ifthefirmisforeignowned.Controlsfortwodigitsectordummiesandyeardummiesincluded((3.1)intext).Standarderrorsa

reclusteredatthefirmlevel.N

isthe

samplesizein

eachregression

.Pvaluesareforthetestthatthecoefficientonthefutureforeignacquisitionsisequaltothatofforeignownedfirms.Thecoefficientsforemploy

ment,hoursof

work,average

hourlywages(average,lowandhigh)arebeinterpretedaspercentagedifferences(logdependentvariable).E.g.,

0.85incolumn(1)impliesthatfutureforeign

acquisitionsare

85percentagepointslargerthantheaveragedomesticfirmintheyearspriortotheacquisition.1.6

incolumn(3

)impliesthattheaverageyearsofsch

oolinginfirms

acquiredbyforeignersis1.6yearshigherthaninth

eaveragedomesticfirminthesecto

r.



9/22

These differences in the workforce characteristics, if not accounted for, translate into differences in

hourly wages across ownership types.21 Columns (8) and (9) of Table 1 report the foreign wage

premium for each education group after controlling for differences across firms in average schooling,

age, tenure and gender for each group respectively: it is 32% for the low education workers and 48%for the high education workers.22 This finding is consistent with Lipsey and Sjoholm's (2004) result of

a foreign wage premium which is increasing with workers' skill.

The estimates forreported in the table show that firms that in the future will become acquired by

foreigners are already very different from the average domestic firm in the sector in the years prior to

the acquisition. Future foreign acquisitions are 85% larger than domestic firms but do not differ in the

average hours of work per employee. Two years before the acquisition they already have a more

educated workforce since their average number of years of schooling is 1.6 years above the one in

existing domestic firms. The workforce in these firms is also younger, less tenured and with more

females than the workforce in domestic firms. Controlling for the differences in these human capital

characteristics, I find evidence of selection of foreign investment into higher wage firms. Firms thatwill become acquired pay 32% higher average hourly wages than domestic firms. This premium

holds for each education group since hourly wages are 24% and 40% higher for low and high

educated workers, respectively. These wage premiums are below the average wage differences

between foreign and domestic owned firms (32% for low educated and 48% for the high educated).

The price cost margin is 0.1 percentage points lower than in the average domestic firm before the

acquisition. However, one should be cautious when interpreting these findings since I cannot control

for differences across firms in input prices. Finally, firms that will become acquired by foreigners are

not statistically identical to foreign owned firms in the years prior to the acquisition, even though the

differences are small in magnitude (the large size of the sample leads to very small standard errors).

In sum, the results presented in this section, together with a large empirical literature, confirm thatthere are substantial differences between foreign and domestic firms. Foreign firms have a younger

and more educated workforce than domestic firms. They also pay higher average wages, controlling

for the quality of the workforce. Not accounting for differences in worker's quality leads us to

overestimate the foreign wage premium by approximately one third. The findings also show that

foreigners do not randomly pick domestic firms to be acquired. Several years prior to the acquisition,

these firms outperform the typical domestic firm in the sector in terms of size, worker quality and

hourly average wages. Moreover, I find evidence that selection on unobservable firm characteristics

is also important. Controlling for observed worker quality, in the years prior to the foreign acquisition,

the average hourly wages in acquired firms are much higher than in the average domestic firm.

4. Does foreign ownership improve labor market outcomes?

Since foreigners select the best domestic firms to be acquired and I do not observe all the

variables foreigners select on, cross sectional estimates of the causal effects of foreign ownership

on labor market outcomes are biased. Take, for example, the case of the foreign wage premium

and assume that foreigners buy firms with more educated workers. If unobserved worker ability

were independent of foreign acquisitions and positively correlated with schooling, then least

21 In appendix A, available at http://econ.worldbank.org/staff/ralmeida, I show how the foreign hourly wage premium

varies once I control for differences across firms in several workforce characteristics and when I allow the foreign

premium to vary across sectors. Throughout the paper I assume a nationally competitive labor market so that workers

move freely across regions. Relaxing this assumption leads to foreign wage premiums that are very similar.22 The number of observations for the hourly wage of high educated workers is smaller than in the other regressions

since 60% of the firms do not report having high educated workers.

http://econ.worldbank.org/staff/ralmeidahttp://econ.worldbank.org/staff/ralmeida


10/22

squares estimates for the foreign wage premium may be downward biased (if foreign acquisitions

and worker's schooling are positively correlated). Alternatively, unobservable technological

characteristics of the firm or unobservable organizational capital which are positively correlated

with the foreign acquisition may imply that the cross sectional estimates are biased upwards.Considering the motives for firm acquisition reviewed in the previous section, one would

expect to observe at least some changes in the acquired firm due to technological or organizational

restructuring of the firm. For example, plant closings can lead to large employment reductions.

Technological change can lead to an increased use of more skilled workers and changes in the

human capital, or it can lead to more on-the-job training with possibly different effects in the wages

of different workers. All this depends on the characteristics of labor markets, on the importance of

foreign acquisitions in the economy and on the directions of changes in the labor demand of

acquired firms. For example, productivity increases can lead to shifts in the labor demand and, as a

result, wages and employment may change. If foreign acquisitions correspond to a small part of

employment in the sector and if labor markets are competitive, wages will not increase and therewill be only increases in the employment of the firm. Alternatively, wages may increase if foreign

acquisitions have a strong impact on aggregate labor demand or if rigidities in the labor market

imply that firms face an upward sloping labor supply curve (e.g., due to monopsony). In this

section, I present reduced form estimates of the total effect of foreign acquisitions on a variety of

labor market variables. The relationship I estimate is not a structural labor demand equation (e.g.,

as in Hammermesh, 1993). However, it can be derived from it in some cases.23

In order to obtain unbiased estimates of the effect of foreign ownership on different labor

market outcomes, I need to take into account the possibility that foreign acquisitions are

endogenous, i.e., they might occur as a reaction to some kind of unobserved firm specific shock.

The findings in the previous section showed that foreign acquisitions are not random and thatforeigners acquire firms that systematically differ from the average domestic firm in the sector. If

foreign acquisitions are driven mainly by (unobserved) permanent differences across firms, this

endogeneity problem can potentially be addressed by examining the same firm over time and to

compare the outcomes of interest in the period before and after the foreign acquisition.

Econometrically, this would amount to estimating the following model with firm fixed effects:

yjt kj dFjtXT

t1

gtDt jt 4:1

where all notation is as above and j is a firm fixed effect. The error term, jt, is assumed to beuncorrelated across firms and time. The estimation of this equation requires longitudinal data for

each firm. The identification of is done exclusively by firms that change the nationality of their

ownership, i.e., that switch from a domestic to a foreign ownership.

Estimating Eq. (4.1) only for the sample of foreign acquisitions could yield biased estimates of.

In particular, it would be identical to comparing outcome yj in the pre and post-acquisition period

without taking into account other aggregate shocks contemporaneous to the acquisition (Meyer,

1994). Therefore, I include in the analysis a control group of domestic firms that identify the

aggregate shocks in the economy captured by t . Domestic firms are a good control group for the

23 In particular, under the assumption that labor supply curves faced by the firms are not affected by the nationality of

their ownership, the reduced form effects are all due to changes in labor demand. Otherwise, they are the combination of

labor supply and labor demand changes. Lichtenberg and Seigel (1992), Brown and Medoff (1988) and McGuckin and

Nguyen (2001) use a specification (for employment) that is closer to this approach.



11/22

sample of acquired firms if both types of firm are growing at similar rates in the years prior to the

acquisition (and hence are likely to be affected similarly by aggregate shocks). In other words, this

approach would be invalid if firms which are acquired grow at systematically different rates than the

average domestic firm. This evidence would suggest that foreign acquisitions would be correlatedwith some firm unobserved shock in growth rates and hence the beforeafter comparison would be

invalid. Even though there is no formal way to test this claim, I present some evidence that this

problem is not very important for several outcomes of interest. To do this I estimate a model similar to

Eq. (3.1) but having the growth rate of the outcome yjt as dependent variable:

lnyjtlnyjt1 bAj dFjXS

s1

gsDs XT

t1

gtDt ejt 4:2

where all the notation is as in Eq. (3.1). This equation is estimated for all firms acquired by foreigners

and for existing domestic and foreign owned firms. In this specification, measures the percentagepoint difference in the growth rate between firms that will be acquired by foreigners over the

following years and domestic firms in the same sector. Analogously, measures the percentage point

difference in the growth rate in existent foreign owned firms and domestic firms in the same sector.

The results of estimating Eq. (4.2) for several outcomes with least squares are presented in

columns (1) to (10) of Table 2. The evidence suggests that acquired firms are growing in the pre-

acquisition period at rates that are not statistically different from the rates of growth in domestic firms

in the same sector. The only exception is for the size of the firm, average tenure of the workers and the

price cost margin. In these cases, there is evidence that firms acquired by foreigners were growing at

higher rates prior to the acquisition than domestic firms (7 percentage points above for employment,

0.03 years above for average tenure of the workforce and 1 percentage point above for the price-costmargin). Existing foreign firms tend to grow at a different rate than the rates acquired firms are

growing in the pre-acquisition period, even though the quantitative differences are small.24 I interpret

these findings as suggestive that for most of the outcomes of interest foreign acquisitions are a

reaction to a permanent firm specific shock (and hence a first difference approach would yield

unbiased estimates for the effect of foreign acquisitions) but that foreigners tend to acquire firms

whose employment, tenure and price cost margin is growing above the average for the sector.

The results of estimating Eq. (4.1) for foreign acquisitions and for existing domestic firms are

reported in Table 3.25 Panel A reports the results when the sample includes firms in manufacturing

and non-manufacturing sectors. The findings suggest that following an acquisition there is an

increase of 14.5% in the total size of the firm. I do not find evidence of substantial restructuring of theworkforce in the acquired firm. There are no significant changes in the average education of the

workforce following the acquisition, measured by the average years of schooling. I also do not find

evidence that other demographic characteristics of the workforce (like age, tenure or gender) change

substantially.26 All this evidence strongly suggests that the profile of the average worker in the firm is

24 For most of the outcomes, I accept the null hypothesis that =. The exceptions include total employment, average

hourly wage of high educated workers and the pricecost margin. Because firms could anticipate the effects of the

acquisition, I tested the robustness of the results to including only growth rates two and three years before the acquisition

for those firms that become acquired. The results are very similar (not reported).25 Since the differences in growth rates between acquired and foreign owned firms are quantitatively small (Table 2), I

also test the robustness of the estimates in Table 3 to the inclusion of foreign owned firms as a control group. I do not find

significant differences in the outcomes relatively to those reported in Table 3 (not reported).26 The coefficients for average age, tenure on-the-job and share of females in the workforce are statistically strong

though quantitatively small.



12/22

Table2

Differencesinthegrowthofoutcomesbetweenfutureforeignacquisitionsandforeignownedfirmsrelativelytodomesticfirms

Employment

Hours

work

perem

ployee

Yearsof

schooling

Age

workforce

Tenure

workforce

Females/

totalworkers

Average

hourlywage

Loweducated

hourlywage

Higheducated

hourlywage

Price-cost

margin

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

(6)

(7)

(8)

(9)

(10)

Futureforeign

acquisitions

0.0

7

0.000

0.005

0.0

01

0.03

0.002

0.001

0.005

0.0

1

0.01

[0.0

16]

[0.0

03]

[0.0

05]

[0.0

03]

[0.0

19]

[0.0

17]

[0.0

06]

[0.0

06]

[0.0

10]

[0.0

05]

Foreignfirms

0.0

2

0.01

0.003

0.0

1

0.002

0.01

0.01

0.004

0.01

0.002

[0.0

05]

[0.0

01]

[0.0

01]

[0.0

01]

[0.0

05]

[0.0

03]

[0.0

01]

[0.0

02]

[0.0

02]

[0.0

01]

Sectordummie

sincluded?

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Timedummies

included?

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Growthav.sch

ooling,age,

tenureandsh.

females

No

No

No

No

No

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Ftest:Futureforeign

acquisitions=Foreign

firms(Pvalue)

0.0

0

0.11

0.68

0.11

0.07

0.52

0.35

0.17

0.0

4

0.05

N

384,8

02

384,80

2

384,8

02

384,802

384,8

02

384,8

02

384,802

363,223

139,094

344,439

Rsquared

0.0

1

0.01

0.00

0.00

0.01

0.00

0.02

0.04

0.0

8

0.00

Thenumbersincolumn(1)representthecoefficientsofaregressionofemploymentgrowthonadummyvariableifafirmw

illbecomeacquiredbyforeignersan

donadummy

variableifthefirmisforeignowned.Controlsfortw

odigitsectordummiesandyeardum

miesareincluded(Eq.

(4.2

)inthetext).

Incolumns(7)to(9)controlsfo

rthegrowthin

averageschooling,age,tenureandfemalesareincluded.Standarderrorsareclusteredatthefirmlevel.Nisthesamplesize

ineachregression.Pvaluesareforthetestthatthe

coefficientonthefutureforeignacquisitionsisequaltothatofforeignownedfirms.The

coefficientsforemployment,hourso

fworkandaveragehourlywages(av

erage,lowand

high)areinterp

retedaspercentagedifferences(logdependentvariable).E.g.,

0.07incolumn(1)impliesthatfutureforeignacquisitionsgrow7percentagepointsabovetheaverage

domesticfirminthesectortwoyearsbeforetheac

quisitiontakesplace.0.0

05incolumn(3)impliesthatthegrowthintheaverageyearsofschoolinginfirm

sacquiredby

foreignersis0.0

5percentagepointslowerthanintheaveragedomesticfirminthesecto

r.



13/22

not significantly affected. Moreover, after controlling for the human capital characteristics of the

workforce, average hourly wages remain constant following the acquisition. This result is robust

within education groups. Column (10) reports an increase in the price-cost margin by 0.4 percent-age

points for the whole sample, suggesting that productivity increases following the foreign acquisition.To keep the comparability with papers in the literature, panel B reports the results of estimating

Eq. (4.1) only for manufacturing firms. I find evidence that employment increases by 10.1% and

that there are very small changes in the human capital composition of the average worker in the

firm.27 Average hourly wages increase by 1.7% following the acquisition (reflecting an increase

in average wages and of hours of work by 2.6% and 1.2%, respectively). Hourly wages for the

high educated workers increase by 3.5% following the acquisition and average hourly wages for

the low educated workers remain unchanged.

In sum, my findings show that following the foreign acquisition there are no substantial changes

in the human capital of the workforce or on the average wages of acquired firms. There is also

evidence that firms increase total employment following the acquisition, even though this estimateis likely to be upward biased since acquired firms were growing at faster rates in the pre-acquistion

period. For manufacturing firms, there is evidence of an increase in average hourly wages for the

high educated workers, after controlling for changes in the quality of the workforce. I interpret

these findings as consistent with a model where foreign firms are relatively risk averse and enter a

new market where learning and adjustment costs are high. Foreigners are more likely to buy the

best performers since they are already similar to their own characteristics. Otherwise, they would

face very high costs of adapting the technology, the workforce or by gaining experience in the host

country. Furthermore, acquired firms only account for a very small share of total employment. As a

result, changes in the labor demand of these firms will not affect the equilibrium wages in the

economy and most of the observed changes will be on the employment margin. Foreign investmentmay lead to an increase in the productivity of the labor force and to a rise in labor demand but, if

wages are fixed, employment will increase. In the manufacturing sector foreign acquisition leads to

an increase in wages of the more educated workers. This could happen if foreign firms provide

more training to these workers than domestic firms, making them different from other educated

workers in the rest of the economy, and therefore paying them higher wages. Alternatively, if there

are rigidities in the labor market for educated workers, it is also possible that foreign acquisitions

lead to higher wages due to an increase in labor demand, even in the absence of training.

The most credible solution to the endogeneity problem of foreign acquisitions would be to find an

external instrument to the foreign acquisition. This instrument had to be uncorrelated with all the

outcomes of interest except through the acquisition itself but such an instrument does not exist in thedata. Alternatively, I could estimate a VAR model and test whether foreign ownership Granger

causes firm characteristics. Unfortunately, the panel dimension of the data is not sufficiently long to

allow me to estimate a specification without serial correlation in the error terms.28

5. Robustness tests

One possible concern is that the findings in Table 3 are driven by the 10% threshold imposed to

define foreign ownership. Mansfield and Romeo (1980) argue that the transfer of foreign technology

27 The only quantitatively important change is associated with a decrease in the share of females in 1.4 percentage

points.28 Details on the results using this approach are available in appendix B at http://econ.worldbank.org/staff/ralmeida.

There, I also discuss other robustness tests for the main findings in the paper.

http://econ.worldbank.org/staff/ralmeidahttp://econ.worldbank.org/staff/ralmeida


14/22

Table3

Fixedeffectsestimatesoftheeffectsofforeignacquisitionsusingascontrolgroupdomesticfirms

Employment

Hourswork

peremployee

Yearsof

schooling

Age

workforce

Tenure

workforce

Females/

totalworkers

Hourly

wage

Loweducated

hourlywage

Higheducated

hourlywage

Price-cost

margin

(1)

(2

)

(3)

(4)

(5)

(6)

(7)

(8)

(9)

(10)

A.A

llSample

Foreignownership

0.145

0.017

0.0

08

0.7

6

0.3

2

0.004

0.004

0.001

0.008

0.0

04

[0.0

35]

[0.0

04]

[0.0

60]

[0.1

57]

[0.1

08]

[0.0

06]

[0.009

]

[0.0

10]

[0.0

16]

[0.0

01]

Timedummies

included?

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Av.schooling,

age,

tenure,sh.females

No

No

No

No

No

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

N

638,896

638,896

638,896

638,8

96

638,896

638,8

96

638,89

6

608,551

248,671

571,6

05

Rsquared

0.94

0.68

0.90

0.8

8

0.91

0.9

3

0.85

0.86

0.85

0.7

2

B.Manufacturing

Foreignownership

0.101

0.012

0.0

22

0.7

73

0.4

65

0.014

0.017

0.009

0.035

0.0

05

[0.0

18]

[0.0

07]

[0.0

50]

[0.1

71]

[0.1

06]

[0.0

05]

[0.009

]

[0.0

08]

[0.0

17]

[0.0

01]

Timedummies

included?

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Av.schooling,

age,

tenure,sh.females

No

No

No

No

No

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

N

133,985

133,985

133,985

133,9

85

133,985

133,9

85

133,98

5

132,775

49,9

65

122,9

87

Rsquared

0.96

0.63

0.85

0.9

1

0.93

0.9

7

0.85

0.87

0.85

0.7

2

Thenumbersincolumn(1)representthecoefficien

tsofaregressionoflogemploymen

tatthefirmlevelonadummyvaria

blethatequalstooneifthefirmisforeignowned,

controllingfor

yearandfirmtimeinvarianteffects(Eq.

(4.1

)inthetext).Incolumns(7)

to(9)thespecificationincludesasexplanatoryvariableaverageyearsofschooling,age,

tenureandsharefemalesintheworkforce.Standarderrorsareclusteredatthefirmlevel.N

isthesamplesizeineachregression.

Thecoefficientsforemployment,hoursofworkand

averagehourly

wages(average,lowandhigh)areinterpretedaspercentagedifferences(logdependentvariable).E.g.,

0.1

4inco

lumn(1)impliesthatfollowingafore

ignacquisition

theemploymen

tinacquiredfirmsisonaverage14p

ercentagepointshigherthantheaverageemploymentinadomesticfirm.P

anelAincludestheestimatesforallthefirmsinthe

sampleandPanelBincludesonlymanufacturingfirms.



15/22

is greater in fully owned foreign firms, specially when competitive advantage of the foreign firm is

based on intangible assets. Larger technological transfers from foreign firms increase productivity

and can possibly increase the use of more educated workers or average wages in the acquired firm. In

this case, the choice of the 10% threshold could be biasing the results against the finding on any effecton wages and workforce composition. I reestimate Eq. (4.1) considering foreign firms only those

firms with full foreign ownership. Given that most of the firms in the sample have majority

participations the results in Table 3 do not change significantly (results are available upon request).

A different concern, specific to the effect of foreign ownership on hourly wages, relates to

possibility that the foreign acquisition changes the composition of the workforce in some unobservable

workforce characteristics (e.g. worker's ability). In Section 2 I showed that foreign and domestic firms

differ significantly with respect to the human capital profile of the workforce. This heterogeneity is

likely to be much more important when comparing different firms rather than when comparing the

same firms over time (which is my approach in Eq. (4.1)). In fact, if the workforce were to be constant

over time, the unobserved ability of the workforce would be perfectly captured by a firm time invarianteffect. However, with a changing workforce this needs not be the case. Moreover, depending on the

correlation between ability and the foreign acquisition the sign of the bias in Table 3 is unclear.

To address this concern, I exploit the fact that in the data firms and workers are matched in each

point in time and that both can be traced over time.29 The best way to account for the bias would be

to compute average wages for those workers that have remained in the firm throughout the entire

period the firm is observed.30 This approach ensures that the set of workers remains constant over

time and one can fully isolate the effect of the foreign acquisition from the effect of omitted ability.

The problem with this approach is that there are very few firms with at least one worker that

complies with this criteria, mostly because of large measurement error in worker identifiers. In

particular, the total number of acquired firms for which there is information on wages is reducedfrom a total of 1381 to approximately 360 firms. An alternative to this approach which

simultaneously mitigates the omitted ability problem and maximizes the information available

over time, is to keep the composition of the workforce fixed only before and after the acquisition.

To do this I compute average wages for a moving window of workers across three consecutive

periods. For existing firms, I identify the group of workers that are currently employed in the firm

and that were employed in the previous year as well as in the following year. For new firms I

identify the group of workers that are currently employed in the firm and that will remain employed

in the following year. For example, consider a domestic firm that exists for the period 19931997

and that is acquired in 1995. The (moving) average wages obtained for this firm in 1994 and 1995

(used to identify the effect of the foreign acquisition) use information for the same set of workersexcept for those workers that were in the firm in 1993 but are no longer there in 1996 and vice-

versa. Using this criteria, I am able to compute the average wages for 1, 346 acquired firms in the

sample, which is approximately 95% of the total number of acquisitions in the data.31

29 The Portuguese data is a matched employer-employee data set. For a review of the litertaure using matched employer

employee see Abowd and Kramarz (1999).30 The worker identifier in this data is the worker's social security number. This identifier is much less reliable than the

firm identifier because the Ministry of Labor, specially in the first years of the sample, did not check the validity of the

codes provided. I have excluded workers without a unique identifier within a firm when tracing the workers over time.

This criteria could still present some problems (e.g., workers with non-valid social security numbers might remain in the

sample as long as they only show up once within each firm) but it maximizes the number of workers for which there is

information. The share of workers that are not unique according to this definition is between 12% (1991) and 7% (1998).31 Using this criterion, between 42% (1998) and 32% (1992) of the workers in the sample in each period are used to

compute average wages.



16/22

Table 4 report the results of estimating Eq. (4.1) for the average wages for this group of workers.

Columns (1) to (3) report the results with least squares ignoring the firm fixed effects (cross

section) and columns (4) to (6) report the results with firm fixed effects. As before, the least squares

estimates of the effect of foreign ownership are always above the firm fixed effects estimates. This

finding suggests that the cherry picking of the foreign investors of domestic firms is robust to

keeping the workforce composition constant. The main difference of keeping the composition

fixed (relatively to Table 3) is that there are slightly larger effects of foreign ownership for averagewages in manufacturing (panel B). In particular, average wages following the acquisition increase

by 2.2% for the low educated workers and 4.3% for the high educated workers.32 However, the

magnitude of these effects are very small when compared to the least square estimates. These

results suggest that the firm expands following the foreign acquisition but that the average quality

of the new entrant is slightly below the quality of the average worker. This is consistent with

foreigners buying the domestic firms with the best workers and hiring the immediately next to the

best when they are expanding in the years following the acquisition (Table 3 shows that average

schooling, age and tenure decrease slightly following the acquisition).

Table 4

Estimates of the effects of foreign acquisitions on wages only for workers that remain in the firm (stayers)

Estimation method: All Low

Educated

High

Educated

All Low

Educated

High

Educated

OLS Fixed effects

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

A. All sample

Foreign ownership 0.36 0.27 0.43 0.009 0.015 0.025

[0.014] [0.013] [0.017] [0.009] [0.009] [0.015]

Sector dummies included? Yes Yes Yes No No No

Time dummies included? Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Av. schooling, age, tenure, sh. females Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

N 550,288 514,406 182,036 550,288 514,406 182,036

R squared 0.40 0.37 0.36 0.86 0.86 0.88

B. Manufacturing

Foreign ownership 0.23 0.18 0.32 0.028 0.022 0.043

[0.018] [0.017] [0.026] [0.013] [0.012] [0.023]

Sector dummies included? Yes Yes Yes No No No

Time dummies included? Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Av. schooling, age, tenure, sh. females Yes Yes Yes Yes Ye Yes

N 123,715 122,031 37,633 123,715 122,031 37,633

R squared 0.42 0.42 0.36 0.85 0.87 0.87

Table reports the foreign wage premium of all the workers that remain in the same firm throughout 3 consecutive periods. The

table reports the least squares estimates of Eq. (4.1) in the text ignoring firm fixed effects in columns (1) to (3) and including

them in columns (4) to (6). Columns (1) and (4) report the results for all the workers, columns (2) and (5) for all the low

educated workers and columns (3) and (6) for the high educated workers. Standard errors are clustered at the firm level.Nisthe

sample size in each regression. Panel A reports the results for the whole sample and Panel B includes only manufacturing firms.

32 I thank the editor for one possible explanation for why there could be a higher increase in average wages for the high

educated workers. If following the acquisition total rents increase and the high educated workers have higher bargaining

power (due to the accumulation of firm specific skills), then their wage adjustment could be higher. Unfortunately my

data does not allow me to test this hypothesis.



17/22

One concern that could still remain with these findings relates to the whether they could be

attributed to the foreign ownership or if they can attributed to the acquisition itself, independently

of the nationality. To the extent that domestic firms also cherry pick the acquired firms, my

results for the selection and for the evolution following the acquisition would be driven by theacquisition itself and not by the foreign acquisitions. As discussed in Section 4 it is difficult to

extract strong predictions about the post acquisition firm performance from the extensive

theoretical literature on mergers and acquisitions. Unfortunately, in the Portuguese data I cannot

identify domestic acquisitions of domestic firms even though I can identify the group of domestic

acquisitions of foreign owned firms.33 To address this concern, I estimate the following model:

yjt kj bFAjt hDAjtXT

t1

gtDt jt 5:1

where FAjt is a dummy variable that assumes the value one in the periods following a foreign

acquisition of a domestic firm, DAjt is a dummy variable that assumes the value one in the periodsfollowing a domestic acquisition of a foreign firm and Dt are year dummies.

34 The results are

reported in Table 5. The findings suggest that the effects on employment are different for foreign

and domestic acquisitions. While employment in the firm increases between 10% and 15%

following a foreign acquisition, in the domestic acquisitions, there is a 5% reduction in total

employment (which fails to be statistically significant but is in line with Conyon et al., 2002b).

Moreover, there is also evidence that the effects on average wages are common to the two types of

ownership changes. The estimates in columns (7) to (9) show that, after keeping the composition of

the workforce constant, average wages in acquired firms increase by a very similar magnitude,

independently of the nationality of the acquiring firm (even though I never reject that the increase

in wages in slightly higher in the foreign acquisitions).Perhaps surprisingly, there is evidence that average years of schooling decrease following a

domestic acquisition. This pattern is puzzling even though the magnitude of the effect is very

small (average schooling in the sample is 6.3 years and the standard deviation of 2.3 years). A

further investigation shows that this effect is not driven by the evolution in the years of schooling

in the existent domestic firms. One possible explanation for this can be that the new workers in

firms that become acquired by domestics are less educated than the existing workers in these

firms. Actually, the average years of schooling of an European worker is higher than for a

Portuguese worker. Since approximately 75% of the Portuguese FDI in this period came from the

E.U., these changes could be simply reflecting the exit of some foreign workers following the

domestic acquisition. On the contrary, when a domestic firm is acquired by a foreign

multinational there is no evidence that foreigners change significantly the average schooling of

the firm, perhaps because this is already very close to the one in fully foreign firms.

Finally, another concern with the estimates in Table 3 is that they are capturing the effects of

other firm practices that change simultaneously with the nationality of the ownership. Since

foreign activities tend to take place in bundles, those firms that are acquired by foreigners are likely

to simultaneously become exporters or importers of some of their intermediate inputs (e.g. Tybout,

33 Foreign acquisitions of domestic firms (or foreign acquisitions of domestic firms) are identified when the share of foreign

ownership changes from being less or equal to 10% to being more than 10% (and vice versa). Given that domestic acquisitions

do not necessarily translate into changes in the share private domestic capital, they cannot be identified in the data set.34 A similar analysis than the one reported in Table 1 (not reported) suggests that foreign owned firms that will be

acquired by domestics are smaller in size, pay lower average hourly wages and have a less educated workforce than the

average foreign firm in the same sector. Still, these firms always outperform the typical domestic firm in the sector.

Again, there are no significant differences in the growth of the outcomes of interest in the pre acquisition period.



18/22

Table5

Estimatesoftheeffectsofforeignanddomesticacq

uisitionsusingascontrolgroupdom

esticfirms

EmploymentYearsof

schooling

Price-cost

margin

Hourly

wage

Loweducated

hourlywage

Higheducated

hourlywage

Hourly

wage

Loweducated

hourlywage

Higheducated

hourlywage

Allworkers

Stayers

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

(6

)

(7)

(8)

(9)

A.A

llsample

Foreignacquisitions

0.145

0.0

07

0.004

0.0

04

0.0

01

0.008

0.009

0.0

15

0.025

[0.0

35]

[0.0

60]

[0.0

01]

[0.0

09]

[0.0

10]

[0.0

16]

[0.0

09]

[0.0

09]

[0.0

15]

Domesticacquisitions

0.016

0.1

75

0.000

0.0

03

0.0

02

0.014

0.008

0.0

16

0.009

[0.0

37]

[0.0

62]

[0.0

01]

[0.0

11]

[0.0

10]

[0.0

19]

[0.0

11]

[0.0

09]

[0.0

16]

Timedummies

included?

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Av.schooling,age,tenure,sh.

Femalesincluded?No

No

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Ftest:foreignacquisitions=domestic

acquisitions(Pvalue)

0.000

0.0

18

0.001

0.88

0.9

8

0.64

0.484

0.0

65

0.232

N

641,475

641,4

75

573,938

641,4

75610,8

89

250,914

552,6

93

516,4

69

183,9

84

Rsquared

0.94

0.9

0

0.72

0.86

0.8

6

0.86

0.86

0.8

6

0.88

B.Manufacturing

Foreignacquisitions

0.102

0.0

21

0.005

0.017

0.0

09

0.034

0.028

0.0

22

0.043

[0.0

66]

[0.1

04]

[0.0

02]

[0.0

13]

[0.0

12]

[0.0

25]

[0.0

13]

[0.0

12]

[0.0

23]

Domesticacquisitions

0.050

0.1

73

0.000

0.0

10

0.0

07

0.000

0.015

0.0

17

0.040

[0.0

42]

[0.0

88]

[0.0

02]

[0.0

15]

[0.0

12]

[0.0

36]

[0.0

12]

[0.0

11]

[0.0

29]

Timedummies

included?

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Av.schooling,age,tenure,sh.

Femalesincluded?No

No

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Ftest:foreignacquisitions=domestic

acquisitions(Pvalue)

0.15

0.1

4

0.03

0.36

0.6

7

0.38

0.039

0.0

62

0.071

N

134,736

134,7

36

123,679

134,7

36133,5

18

50,6

21

124,4

37

122,7

36

38,207

Rsquared

0.96

0.8

5

0.72

0.85

0.8

7

0.85

0.85

0.8

7

0.87

Thenumbersin

column(1)representthecoefficients

ofaregressionoflogemploymentat

thefirmlevelonadummyvariableth

atequalstooneifthefirmisacquired

byforeigners,

onadummythatequalsoneifthefirmsisacquiredb

ydomesticsandcontrolsforyearand

firmtimeinvarianteffects(Eq.

(5.1

)inthetext).Columns(1)to(6)reporttheresultsfor

alltheworkers

inthesamplewhilecolumns(7)to(9)reporttheresultsforthestayers.A

llthewageequationsincludeasexplanatoryvariablesaverageyearsofschooling,age,

tenureandsharefemalesintheworkforce.Standarderrorsareclusteredatthefirmlevel.Nisthesamplesizeineachregres

sion.Thecoefficientsforemploymentandaverage

hourlywages(average,lowandhigh)areinterprete

daspercentagedifferences(logdependentvariable).Standarderrorsare

clusteredatthefirmlevel.PanelAincludesallthe

sectorsinthesampleandPanelBincludesonlyma

nufacturingsectors.



19/22

2000; Bernard et al., 2005). Since the Portuguese data set does not collect any information on

exports it is not possible to check empirically how controlling for these activities would affect the

findings. However, given the findings in the literature on exporting, my results for the post

acquisition performance should not be too much affected by the exporting activity even if it takesplace simultaneously with the foreign acquisition.35 For example, Clerides et al. (1998) and

Bernard and Jensen (1999) find evidence that the best performers self select into exporting

activities and no evidence of significant changes in productivity or wages after the firm becomes an

exporter. The evidence of the effects of importing intermediate inputs are much less studied but

several papers find evidence of a positive correlation between importing intermediate inputs and

firm performance (e.g. Tybout and Westbrook, 1995). Assuming that the effects on productivity

are quantitatively important and if they translate into high wage growth, my estimates for the

changes in average wages could be overestimated. Since I find no or small effects in average hourly

wages, this would imply that foreign acquisition are associated with a decrease in productivity and

wages. This finding would be consistent with a short run decrease in the firm's productivityfollowing a foreign acquisition, which could be caused by assimilation problems when entering

into a new market (e.g. Harris and Robinson, 2002; Ravenscraft and Scherer, 1987).

6. Conclusion

Foreign firms have a more educated workforce and pay higher wages than domestic firms even

after controlling for worker quality, at a given moment in time. This does not imply that foreign

ownership improves the labor market outcomes of the workers since foreign investment may be

guided by unobservable firm and worker characteristics correlated with schooling or wages. Using a

matched employer

employee data set of Portuguese firms during the nineties, I illustrate theimportance of selection of foreign investment to high wage and high human capital firms and to

isolate the effect of foreign ownership on several labor market outcomes. Existing empirical

evidence for European countries is scarce and, apart from evidence for the UK, not much is known

about the impact of foreign acquisitions on the labor markets outcomes. Portugal is an interesting

case, as in the late 1980s and 90s there was a permissive legal framework for the operation of foreign

firms that translated into generous amounts of FDI. Moreover, Portugal is a developed country

although at the tail of the income distribution within the European Union. Therefore, the findings in

the paper may be particularly important to understand the effects of foreign direct investment in the

labor markets of the transition economies as they will soon join the European Union.

My findings suggest that most of the cross sectional differences between foreign and domesticfirms are driven by foreigners cherry picking domestic firms to be acquired. Acquired firms have

a more educated workforce, and pay higher wages for a given workforce quality. Moreover, these

firms are already much more similar to the group of existing foreign firms and, following the

foreign acquisition, there are no significant changes in the human capital of the workforce. There

is evidence that the size of the firm increases and that the hourly wages for those workers that

remain in the firm increases slightly following the acquisition by foreigners. Nevertheless, the

increase in average wages are modest (between 2% for the low educated and 4% for the high

educated workers) and well below the cross sectional estimates of the foreign wage premium.

Suggestive evidence shows that it might not be specific to foreign acquisitions since wages go up

by similar magnitudes following domestic acquisitions.

35 Bernard and Jensen (1999) find that employment growth is higher for exporters. Therefore, the estimated increase in

employment following the acquisition is likely to be biased upwards for those firms that export (in addition to the positive

bias caused by selection of foreign investment into high growth firms).



20/22

TableA1

Asummaryofth

eliteratureonforeignwagepremiumusingfirmleveldata

Country/period

Data/samplecoverage

Dep

endentvariable

Numberofacquisitions

Independentvariables

Foreignwagepremium

Firmlevel

W

orkerlevel

Crosssection

Paneldata

Aitken,Harrison

and

Lipsey(1996)

Paneloffirms

Log

averagefirmwage

byskillgroup

N.A.

sector,region,assets,size,ageN

.A.

25%skilled

17%unskilled

14%skilled

9.3%unskilled

Venezuela,

19771989

EncustaIndustrial.

Manufacturing

Girma,Greenaway

andWakelin(1999)

Paneloffirms.

Log

averagefirmwage

N.A.

sector

N

.A.

9.50%

0.40%

UK,

19911996

OneSource.Manufacturing

Conyon,Girma,

Thompsonand

Wright(2002)

Paneloffirms.

Log

averagefirmwage

129foreignacquisitions

and331domestic

acquisitions

assets,sector

averagewages

N

.A.

3.30%

UK,

19891994

OneSource.manufacturing

GirmaandGorg

(2003)

Paneloffirms.

Log

averagefirmwage

bys

killgroup

346foreign

acquisitions

averageregional-sector

wage,averagewagein

complementskillgroup,capitalN

.A.

2%4.9%

skilled2%

2.8%unskilled

U.K.

19801994

ARD.

Electronicsandfood

Lipseyand

Sjoholm(2004)

Crosssectionoffirms.

Log

averagefirmwage

bys

killgroup

sector,region,energy

perworker,inputsper

worker,size,public

ownership

E

ducation,gender

byskillgroup

12%bluecollor,

22%whitecollar

Indonesia,1996

CensusManufacturing

Lipseyand

Sjoholm(2002)

Paneloffirms.

Log

averagefirmwage

bys

killgroup

1045foreign

acquisitions1243

domesticacquisition

s

sector,region,energy

perworker,inputsper

worker,size,publicownership

N

.A.

28%bluecollar

41%whitecollar

17%blue

collar33%

whitecollar

Indonesia,1975

1999

CensusManufacturing

Almeida(2004)

Paneloffirms

(MEEDatfirmlevel)

Log

averagefirmwage

bye

ducationgroup

688foreign

acquisitions505

domesticacquisition

s

sector,size,age,

publicownership.

E

ducation,gender,

age,tenure,

hours

w

orkedbyeducation

group

31%loweducated

46%higheducated

0.1%low

educated

0.8%high

educated

Portugal,19911

998

CensusManufacturingand

Nonmanufacturing

Note:Tablereportsasummaryofthemainpapersthathaves

tudiedtheforeignwagepremiumusingmic

rodata.T

hefirstevidencethatforeignfirmswereassociatedwithhigherwagescamefromstudiesusing

industryleveldata(seee.g.FelicianoandLipsey,1999;Aitk

en,

HarrisonandLipsey,1996).Asdatasetsbecomeavailable,foreignwagepremium

shavebeenestimatedusingplantorfirmlevelinformation.

AppendixA.



21/22

Appendix B. Supplementary data

Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at

doi:10.1016/j.jinteco.2006.10.001.

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