Property Rights, Asset Specificity, and the Division of Labour under Alternative Capitalist Relations

Ugo Pagano

Cambridge Journal of Economics, 1991, vol. 15, issue 3, 315-42

Abstract: Is the division of labor under capitalism because of transaction and technological efficiency or because of inefficient capitalist property rights? The answer of this paper is that under "classical" capitalism there is an inefficient division of labor because of underinvestment in asset-specific labor which can be improved by expanding workers' rights in two different ways defining "company workers" and "unionized" capitalism. An implication of the analysis is that markets, far from being the selection mechanism where efficient institutions evolve, may imply the reproduction of inefficient property rights and be shaped by them. Copyright 1991 by Oxford University Press.

Date: 1991
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