This paper uses new Japanese panel data to estimate the impact of various human resource management practices (HRMP's) on productivity efficiency. These include information sharing devices, such as joint labor-management committees (JLMC's) and non-union employee associations (NUEA's), and...

The slowdown in productivity growth since the 1970s has led to increased interest in alternative compensation schemes—such as profit sharing and gainsharing—that might raise worker productivity and reduce turnover. In this working paper, Jones, Kato, and Pliskin summarize the rise in...

Using data for various years, including new data for 1973–84, the authors examine the scope, nature, determinants, and effects of Japanese employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs). In 1988, of firms listed on Japan's eight stock exchange markets, 91% had an ESOP, and the average...

The authors use the econometric case study method to investigate the direct impact of offline teams on productivity in a non-unionized subsidiary of a multinational firm from January 1999 through November 2001. They analyze daily data on rejection, production, and downtime rates for both team...

The authors undertake the first econometric study of efficiency for Eroski, the largest member of the Mondragon group of worker cooperatives. Three types of stores are found within Eroski: 1) cooperatives with significant employee ownership and voice; 2) cooperatives with modest employee ownership...

We study the impact of social identity on worker competition by exploiting the exogenous variations in workers' origins and the well-documented social divide between urban resident workers and rural migrant workers in large urban Chinese firms. We analyze data on weekly output, individual...

This paper provides novel evidence on the causal effect on female employment of labor market deregulation by using the 1985 amendments to the Labor Standards Law (LSL) in Japan as a natural experiment. The original LSL of 1947 prohibited women from working overtime exceeding two hours a day; six...