Angesichts der erheblichen Transformationsanstrengungen, die die BaltischenRepubliken in den letzten Jahren zu bewältigen hatten, haben sich erheblicheVeränderungen auch auf dem Gebiet des Genossenschaftswesens ergeben.Wie in kaum einer anderen Region in Europa ist die Entwicklung der...

Gewerkschaften werden oft von Liberalen und Libertären kritisiert. Dabei sind sie Ausdruck grundlegender Freiheitsrechte, insbesondere der Vereinigungsfreiheit. Auch das Streikrecht ist innerhalb gewisser Grenzen ein legitimes Freiheitsrecht. Eine freie Gesellschaft ist mehr als Marktwirtschaft...

Neo-republicans agree that among the implications of a republican theory of liberty is that the socio-economic independence of the citizen be guaranteed. This commitment to socio-economic independence appears most clearly in the modern republican preoccupation with 'free labor.' Most...

Mondragón Corporación Cooperativa (MCC) is the bigger cooperative industrial group in the world in terms of turnover. It originated in the 1950s and tracked an unique development path based on internal and dimensional growth which led to relevant governance innovations. In light of this,...

The purpose of this paper is to delve into three side-arguments or themes about democratic enterprises (as opposed to considering first principles). Approach: 1) The first theme is the question of capital structure where labor-managed firms are often pictured as having "horizon problem." Yet...

Standard economic theory predicts that the accumulation of capital by means of indivisible reserves would lead to underinvestment and undercapitalization due to the truncated temporal horizon of worker-members in cooperatives (the so-called “Furubotn-Pejovich effect”). An inefficiently low...

A major theoretical objection against employee ownership is that workers become inadequately diversified and exposed to excessive financial risk. Recent theory concludes that 10-15% of a worker's wealth portfolio can be prudently invested in employer stock provided the rest of the portfolio is...

Jamie Morgan's commentary (Morgan, 2016) on my paper 'The Labour Theory of Property and Marginal Productivity Theory' (Ellerman, 2016) and Ted Burczak's later comments raise a number of issues that surely will occur to other readers and that need to be addressed. I take the occasion to expand...

The paper reviews the current state of employee ownership in Britain. It discusses the various forms of employee ownership, highlighting trust-owned, directly-owned, and hybrid forms. It then considers the influences on the development of employee ownership, finding that political support is the...