Patterns of employment relationships: the association between compensation policy and contractual arrangements
利用葡萄牙大型企业的雇主-雇员匹配数据，通过模糊聚类识别出三种薪酬政策类型，并发现低工资与灵活合同常出现在同一企业，且年轻和女性员工在竞争型企业中占比过高。
Firms respond differently to labour market regulations and develop an employment relationship accordingly. We use linked employer–employee data to examine the relationship between compensation policies and contractual arrangements in large-sized firms in Portugal. In this country, the wages are regulated through minimum wage and collective agreement, while employment is protected by stringent employment legislation. The empirical analysis starts with a fuzzy clustering to identify typical compensation policies. Three major segments emerge from this analysis: Competitive, Internal Labour Markets and Incentive. The first segment comprises low-wage firms, which are highly responsive to market conditions. The other two reveal properties of internal labour markets, although the incentive-based firms reinforce the use of discretionary power to differentiate the workforce. Subsequently, we estimate a regression model to examine how the compensation policy interacts with contractual arrangement. Empirical evidence confirms the segmentation predictions, i.e. low, flexible wages and flexible contracts prevail in the same firms. Furthermore, vulnerable categories like young workers and female workers are over-represented in Competitive firms, while high-wages are associated with incentive devices benefiting white-collar employees. Apparently, firms foster inequality among segments of workers and often penalise or favour the same category of workers.