This study uses personally collected data from 41 steel production lines to assess the effects of Japanese and U.S. human resource management (HRM) practices on worker productivity. The Japanese production lines employ a common system of HRM practices including: problem-solving teams, extensive...

Presents new data on state limitations on municipal government property taxation and spending for all fifty states between 1976 and 1986. Cross section and first difference models estimate the impact of the different limitations on the growth of property tax revenues and total municipal revenues.

Benefits of collective bargaining in the local public sector are always nonrival for covered employees. In states with public sector right-to-work laws, they are also nonexcludable. Among 10,308 county and city departments that were nonunion in 1977, the probability of engaging in collective...

This article demonstrates that state collective bargaining laws are important determinants of union and nonunion public employee compensation. State laws that provide stronger bargaining rights and ensure closure to the bargaining process increase the direct effect of police unions on...

Using a detailed personally-assembled data set on the performance of collegiate and professional basketball players over the 1997-2010 period, we conduct a very direct test of two questions. Does performance in the NCAA "March Madness" college basketball tournament affect NBA teams' draft...

This study investigates the professional soccer industry to ask whether the talent of an individual's co-workers helps explain differences in the rate of human capital accumulation on the job. Data tracking national soccer team performance and the professional leagues their members play for are...

Traditional human capital theory emphasizes a worker's investment in knowledge. However, when a worker is faced with day-to-day problems on the job, the solutions to the problems often require more knowledge from a team of experts within the firm. When a worker taps into the knowledge of...

Do human resource management (HRM) practices, such as incentive pay, teamwork, training, and careful screening practices, raise productivity, and if so, under what conditions does productivity rise? Recently, this question has been a central focus in organizational and personnel economics. We...

The authors investigate the productivity effects of innovative employment practices using data from a sample of thirty-six homogeneous steel production lines owned by seventeen companies. The productivity regressions demonstrate that lines using a set of innovative work practices, which include...