The School of Economics, Management and Political Science at the University of Minho (EEG) is proud to announce that Cátia Cerqueira, a PhD student in Economics, defended her doctoral thesis entitled “Technology Adoption, Labour Market Institutions, and Firm Capabilities” on 27 July 2026.
In the author’s own words:
"This thesis examines how firm capabilities and labour market institutions shape the adoption of digital and automation technologies, and how these adoption decisions affect firm performance and worker outcomes. Understanding both the determinants and consequences of technology adoption is essential for analysing productivity dynamics, structural transformation, and distributional effects. The analysis draws on a linked employer-employee database of Portuguese firms, combining the survey on the use of information and communication technologies in enterprises (IUTICE), international trade records (CI), the integrated accounts system of enterprises (SCIE), and personnel records (QP).
The first chapter investigates the timing and consequences of adopting cloud computing and big data technologies, distinguishing between first movers, followers, and non-adopters. Firms with more educated managers and workers, and managers with shorter tenure, adopt earlier, particularly in the case of big data. Adoption is associated with improved firm performance, and the benefits of big data are amplified by stronger human capital. For big data, early adopters retain persistent productivity and value-added advantages over followers, highlighting that technological complexity determines the role of timing and internal capabilities in shaping performance effects.
The second chapter analyses the impact of Portugal's 2009 compulsory schooling reform on firms' adjustment towards automation, which raised the school-leaving age from 15 to 18 (or to the completion of 12 years of education) and restricted firms' access to underage workers. Using linked employer-employee and trade data, we compare post-reform changes between manufacturing firms with greater and lower pre-reform exposure to underage labour. More exposed firms experienced a decline in underage employment and adjusted primarily through changes in workforce composition, with increases in complementary ICT employment and some evidence of occupational reallocation towards automation-related tasks. However, the increase in the probability of hiring ICT workers does not appear to be reform-specific, as placebo tests also produce positive and statistically significant estimates. Overall, the findings suggest heterogeneous firm responses to a labour supply shock, primarily concentrated in labour reallocation and occupational restructuring rather than in capital deepening or automation via robot imports.
The third chapter examines whether statutory minimum wage increases influence robot adoption and the consequent effects of automation on firm and worker outcomes. Firms exposed to larger wage increases are more likely to adopt industrial robots, with effects materialising with a lag of three to five years. Robot adoption is associated with expansion in firm scale, including value added and employment, although these trajectories are partly driven by positive selection, as high-performing firms are more likely to adopt. These firm-level patterns motivate our empirical strategy, which focuses on differences in outcomes among workers within the same firm. Workers on fixed-term contracts in tasks more exposed to automation face higher separation rates, while permanent workers are reassigned internally. Workers in more automatable tasks employed in robot-adopting firms experience a relative wage penalty compared with less-exposed workers.
Overall, the thesis shows that technology adoption is shaped by the interaction between firm capabilities and labour market institutions. Managerial quality and workforce skills determine firms' capacity to adopt complex digital technologies, while institutional changes in labour supply and costs influence incentives for automation and workers' labour market outcomes. From a policy perspective, education, wage, and innovation policies should be considered jointly, with complementary measures to promote skill formation, support worker mobility, and ensure productivity gains from digitalisation and automation are broadly shared."
The doctoral thesis was supervised by Miguel Portela, Professor in the Department of Economics at the School of Economics, Management and Political Science, University of Minho.
The EEG congratulates Cátia Cerqueira on her defence and wishes her every success in her professional and personal life!
