By relaxing the common efficiency wage assumption of exogenous shirking detection probabilities, we demonstrate how standards and efficiency wages are related. In a more general setting where the probability of detection depends upon the equilibrium effort level of non-shirkers, we show that the...

Whilst existing efficiency wage literature assumes detection probabilities of shirkers are exogenous, this paper finds them positively and endogenously dependent on non-shirkers' effort. It shares the result with the endogenous monitoring models where, in some regions, workers reduce effort in...

We provide the first econometric study of efficiency for a member of the Mondragon group of worker cooperatives. Eroski is a retail distribution chain and, most unusually, there are two distinct types of hypermarkets: (i) cooperatives with significant employee ownership and voice; and (ii) GESPAs...

The conditions under which profit sharing affects workplace productivity have never been fully understood. Using panel data, this paper examines whether there is any link between adoption of an employee profit sharing plan and subsequent productivity growth in Canadian establishments, and...

We show that worker wellbeing is not only related to the amount of compensation workers receive but also how they receive it. While previous theoretical and empirical work has often been pre-occupied with individual performance-related pay, we here demonstrate a robust positive link between the...

A worker co-operative is a firm that is owned and managed by those who work in it. This paper provides a selective review of research in economics on worker cooperatives. It concentrates on the volatility of earnings and employment in the co-ops compared with conventional capitalist firms; on...

While intuition suggests that empowering workers to have some say in the control of the firm is likely to have beneficial incentive effects, empirical evidence of such an effect is hard to come by because of numerous confounding factors in the naturally occurring data. We report evidence from a...

Many large listed firms offer workers the opportunity to buy shares in the firm at discounted rates through employee stock purchase plans (ESPP). The discounted rate creates a gift exchange, where the firm hopes that workers who accept the gift reciprocate with greater loyalty and effort. But...

This paper investigates the relationship between workplace democracy and job flows (net job creations, gross job creations and destructions) by comparing the behavior of worker-managed firms (WMFs) and conventional firms. The empirical analysis relies on high frequency administrative firm-level...

Workers in cooperatives are self-employed workers and, if they resemble employees in conventional workplaces, they care about the length of their working hours. In this paper, their choice of hours is characterized as a conventional labor supply decision and a familiar hours-wage relationship is...