What enables some employee ownership firms to overcome the free rider problem and motivate employees to improve performance? This study analyzes the role of human resource policies in the performance of employee ownership companies, using employee survey data from 14 companies and a national...

Employee ownership in U.S. companies has grown substantially in the past 20 years. This paper reviews and provides some meta-analyses on the accumulated evidence concerning the prevalence, causes, and effects of employee ownership, covering 25 studies of employee attitudes and behaviors, and 27...

This study provides the first comprehensive estimates of children and youth working under conditions that violate federal and state child labor laws. Using the CPS, NLS, and other sources, it is estimated that 148,000 minors are employed illegally in an average week working too many hours or in...

What effect does a severe disability have on individuals' employment and earnings? Has the computer revolution lessened the adverse labor market consequences of severe disabilities? This paper investigates the labor market effects of severe, traumatic disabilities resulting from spinal cord...

Group incentive systems have to overcome the free rider or 1/N problem, which gives workers an incentive to shirk, if they are to succeed. This paper uses new questions on responses to shirking from the General Social Survey and a special NBER survey of workers at over 300 worksites in 14...

This paper examines cross-country differences in labour policies and practices and employee performance and attitudes toward work from a sample of nearly 30,000 employees in a large multinational manufacturing firm. The analysis shows: 1) large establishment and country differences in work...

This paper examines the effect of a variety of employee ownership programs on employees' holdings of their employers' stock, their earnings and their wealth. Two major datasets are employed: the NBER Shared Capitalism Research Project employee survey dataset and the 2002 and 2006 national...

The relative decline of defined benefit (DB) pension plans, and growth of defined contribution (DC) plans, has been often noted but not extensively explored. This paper reports on the construction of a new longitudinal company-based dataset on pension plans for the years 1980-86 (including all...

We investigate the relationship of "shared capitalist" compensation systems - profit/gainsharing, employee ownership, and stock options - to the culture for innovation and employees' ability and willingness to engage in innovative activity. Using a large dataset with over 25,000 employee surveys...

Existing research tends to show that profit-sharing plans for employees are associated with higher company productivity and profitability, though the causality and mechanisms are unclear. This study uses new data from a survey of 500 U.S. public companies, and panel data on corporate...