Do sunk costs nip worker-owned firms in the bud?

Thibault Mirabel

Economic and Industrial Democracy, 2025, vol. 46, issue 4, 1164-1187

Abstract: In this article the author analyzes the interaction effect of the sunk cost of physical capital and of human capital on the entry of worker-owned firms (WOFs) and conventional firms (CFs). The author estimates a logit model and uses a comprehensive dataset of new French firms in manufacturing sectors with proxies of sunk costs defined at the sector level. The results show that the likelihood of WOF entry is the highest when the sunk cost of human capital is dominant while the sunk cost of physical capital is negligible, as predicted by Kazuhiko Mikami and Satoru Tanaka in their 2010 article. The interaction effect between the types of sunk costs is stronger for worker buyouts than for newly created WOFs. These results are robust to different estimation methods and to endogeneity concerns. These results contribute to the general understanding of the rarity of WOFs in manufacturing sectors and are relevant to policy initiatives supporting cooperative modes of firm organization.

Keywords: Cooperatives; employee ownership; human capital; labor–management cooperation; worker participation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ecoind:v:46:y:2025:i:4:p:1164-1187

DOI: 10.1177/0143831X241284832

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