Nobody’s gonna slow me down? The effects of a transportation cost shock on firm performance and behavior
利用葡萄牙高速公路收费这一准实验，研究发现收费导致企业营业额下降10.2%、生产率下降4.3%，企业通过裁员和降薪削减成本，部分企业退出市场。
We study the firm-level responses to a substantial increase in transportation costs in the wake of a quasi-experiment that introduced tolls in a subset of Portuguese highways. Exploiting a unique dataset encompassing the universe of Portuguese private firms, we find that the introduction of tolls caused a substantial decrease in turnover (−10.2%) and productivity (−4.3%) in treated firms vis-à-vis firms in the comparison group. In response to the tolls, firms substantially cut employment-related expenses and purchases of other inputs. Labor costs were reduced by both employment cuts and a decrease in average wages. While firms did not increase inventory, there is some evidence for increased firm exit, in particular by firms in tradables sectors.