This dataset covers the composition of the boards of the 125 largest Portuegese firms (by assets) in several benchmark years. These years reflect the different contexts faced by business firms over roughly a hundred years— 1913 to 2010.
The first year— 1913— comes at the end of the ‘long nineteenth century’, which was characterized by institutional transformation, but slow economic growth and weak industrialization. The second benchmark year— 1925— marks the end of the buoyant first half of the 1920s, when several industrial sectors reaped the benefits of tariff protection. The next— 1937— captures the impact on the top of the business structure of the domestic monetary and fiscal stabilization policies of the late 1920s, which was followed by the Great Depression. By 1957, another benchmark year, Portugal was entering a period during which modern economic growth emerged following two decades of a corporatist environment. The year 1973 represents the summit of Portuguese economic growth, and we analyze the corporate network just before the 1974 revolution and the subsequent institutional shock suffered by the business structure because of the nationalizations of 1975. A snapshot of the corporate network after the impact of nationalizations is provided in 1983. The next benchmark year, 1997, captures the corporate network during the privatization process and 10 years after the entry into the European Economic Community. Finally, in the last year— 2010— we look at Portugal’s current corporate structure.
The data on big linkers and central firms, that are part of this project, are not part of this data package.
