When Workers Share in Profits: Effort and Responses to Shirking

Richard Freeman

CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: This paper summarizes new evidence from the "Shared Capitalism" Project on the extent to which workers' earnings depend on the performance of their firm or work group in the US and advanced European countries and on the impact of sharing arrangements on economic behavior. The evidence shows that: 1) a large and growing proportion of workers are covered by shared capitalism through worker profit-sharing, bonuses, or worker ownership of shares; 2) outcomes for workers and firms are higher under shared capitalism than under other work and pay arrangements; and 3) that worker co-monitoring helps overcome the free rider problem that arises when part of workers pay depends on the productivity and effort of all workers.

Keywords: Profit sharing; efficiency wages (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 J33 J41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-eec, nep-lab and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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https://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp0882.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: When Workers Share in Profits: Effort and Responses to Shirking (2008)
Working Paper: When workers share in profits: effort and responses to shirking (2008)
Journal Article: When Workers Share in Profits: Effort and Responses to Shirking (2007)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp0882

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