A growing theoretical and empirical literature is concerned with the effects of flexible workplace systems or High Performance Work Organizations (HPWOs) on wages. Existing theoretical literature suggests that these forms of organization should lead to higher inequality across firms, increased...

Using a general two-stage framework, this paper gives sufficient conditions for increasing competition to have negative or positive effects on R&D-investment, respectively. Both possibilities arise in plausible situations, even if one uses relatively narrow definitions of increasing competition....

This paper studies the interactions between an individual's self-esteem and his social environment - in the workplace, at school, and in personal relationships. Because a person generally has only imperfect knowledge of his own abilities, people who derive benefits from his performance (parent,...

This paper sheds light on how changes in the organization of work can help to understand increasing wage inequality. We present a theoretical model in which workers with a wider span of competence (higher level of multitasking) earn a wage premium. Since abilities and opportunities to expand the...

We use a comprehensive dataset of French manufacturing firms to study their internal organization. We first divide the employees of each firm into `layers' using occupational categories. Layers are hierarchical in that the typical worker in a higher layer earns more, and the typical firm...

Recent human capital theories predict that labor market frictions and product market competition influence firm-sponsored training. Using matched worker-firm data from Dutch manufacturing, our paper empirically assesses the validity of these predictions. We find that a decrease in labor market...

This paper uses firm level panel data of firm provided training to estimate its impact on productivity and wages. To this end the strategy proposed by Ackerberg, Caves and Frazer (2006) for estimating production functions to control for the endogeneity of input factors and training is applied....

Until 1970, the New York Stock Exchange prohibited public incorporation of member firms. After the rules were relaxed to allow joint stock firm membership, investment-banking concerns organized as partnerships or closely-held private corporations went public in waves, with Goldman Sachs (1999)...

Unlike many other contracts, employment contracts are subject to various external administrative procedures governing separations, ranging from compulsory severance payments and advance notice periods (usually seniority based), to collective layoff procedures (usually depending on the firm's...