The role of employee incentive pay in the competitiveness of family and non-family firms

Insufficient attention has been paid to the different roles of wage incentives in the competitiveness of family and non-family firms. This paper addresses this issue and uses a sample of listed and non-listed Italian firms for 2007 and 2010 to show that family firms that adopt incentive wages obtain greater gains in competitiveness with respect to non-family firms. Unlike what occurs in non-family firms, the efficiency enhancing effect of incentive wages more than compensates for the premiums paid to employees and enables family firms to achieve significant gains in terms of competitiveness.