Privatisation in Portugal: employee owners or just happy employees

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the impact of certain measures designed to enhance employee ownership within the framework of the Portuguese privatisation process.

We seek to quantify the advantages consented to employees considering the package of special conditions they were entitled to, using data from 60 privatisation operations. Initially employees benefited from significant financial advantages. However, if they sold their shares just after the unavailability period, the returns obtained were very uneven, if not negative. Were the special conditions offered to employees simply the price paid for an environment of low social conflict?