We explore the relationship between employee trust of managers and workplace performance. We present a theoretical framework which serves to establish a link between employee trust and firm performance as well as to identify possible mechanisms through which the relationship may operate. We then...

This paper provides a case study of the effect of labor relations on product quality. We consider whether a long, contentious strike and the hiring of replacement workers at Bridgestone/Firestone’s Decatur plant in the mid-1990s contributed to the production of defective tires. Using several...

This paper analyses the relationship between training, job satisfaction and workplace performance using the British 2004 Workplace Employee Relations Survey (WERS). Several measures of performance are analysed including absence, quits, financial performance, labour productivity and product...

This paper presents a tractable formalization and an empirical investigation of the quality-complementarity hypothesis, the hypothesis that input quality and plant productivity are complementary in generating output quality. We embed this complementarity in a general-equilibrium trade model with...

Product quality is often unobservable ex-ante and consumers rely on experts' judgments, sometimes in the form of ratings or awards. Do awards affect consumers' choices or, conversely, are they conferred on the most popular products? To disentangle this issue, we use data about the most important...

We consider the welfare effects of skilled worker emigration in a context where skilled labor plays a role in product design. We show such emigration can benefit the residents left behind, even when consumers’ tastes exhibit a form of home bias. This is because emigration improves the design...