Workers paid by the piece should in principle cooperate with new techniques that increase their output. In practice, however, firms seem unable to keep piece rates fixed, and when they cut rates workers often respond by restricting output. This paper investigates a case where in fact firms...

Why is it that firms that compete within the same industrial sector have divergent productivity growth over time? Is this phenomenon related to specific characteristics of their organizations, their human capital, their capital investments or a mix of all of these parameters? This paper provides...

This paper examines innovation processes or technical change-generation processes at the firm level. It emphasizes the notion that the element of technical and technological change that is a determinant of productivity growth is strongly induced by internal factors related to the firm's...

The importance of technical change as a crucial element explaining inter-country differences in levels and rates of change in industrial productivity has been increasingly acknowledged. Hence, growing significance has been attached to developing the capability to generate such change. However,...