Results

Journal article

Labour Economics:

Share capitalism and worker wellbeing

We show that worker wellbeing is determined not only by the amount of compensation workers receive but also by how compensation is determined. While previous theoretical and empirical work has often been preoccupied with...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Share capitalism and worker wellbeing

We show that worker wellbeing is not only related to the amount of compensation workers receive but also how they receive it. While previous theoretical and empirical work has often been pre-occupied with individual perf...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

It's where you work: increases in earnings dispersion across establishments and individuals in the US

This paper links data on establishments and individuals to analyze the role of establishments in the increase in inequality that has become a central topic in economic analysis and policy debate. It decomposes changes in...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Employee stock purchase plans - gift or incentive? Evidence from a multinational corporation

Many large listed firms offer workers the opportunity to buy shares in the firm at discounted rates through employee stock purchase plans (ESPP). The discounted rate creates a gift exchange, where the firm hopes that wor...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Paying for Performance: Incentive Pay Schemes and Employees' Financial Participation

We present new comparable data on the incidence of performance pay schemes in Europe and the USA. We find that the percentage of employees exposed to incentive pay schemes ranges from around 10-15 percent in some Europea...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

To Join or Not to Join? Factors Influencing Employee Share Plan Membership in a Multinational Corporation

Many firms encourage employees to own company stock through share plans that subsidize the price at favorable rates, but even so many employees do not buy shares. Using a new survey of employees in a multinational with a...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

Variation in Educational Outcomes and Policies Across Countries and of Schools within Countries

This study examines the variation in educational outcomes across and within countries using the TIMSS mathematics tests. It documents the wide cross-country variation in the level and dispersion of test scores. Countries...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Shared capitalism: does it work?

Alex Bryson and Richard Freeman ask whether employee share ownership leads to better performance...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

What if Congress Doubled R&D Spending on the Physical Sciences?

Many business, academic, and scientific groups have recommended that the Congress substantially increase R&D spending in the near future. President Bush’s American Competitiveness Initiative calls for a doubling of spend...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

How Does Shared Capitalism Affect Economic Performance in the UK?

This paper uses nationally representative linked workplace-employee data from the British 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey to examine the operation of shared capitalist forms of pay – profit-sharing and group p...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

When Workers Share in Profits: Effort and Responses to Shirking

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 ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Understanding trade unions

Richard Freeman, professor of economics at Harvard University, visiting professor at LSE and senior research fellow in CEP's research programmes on labour markets and wellbeing, has been awarded the IZA Prize in Labor Ec...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Labor Market Institutions Around the World

This paper documents the large cross-country differences in labor institutions that make them a candidate explanatory factor for the divergent economic performance of countries and reviews what economists have learned ab...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

What Voice Do British Workers Want?

The problems/need for representation and participation reported by workers vary across workplaces and by types of jobs. Workers with greater workplace needs are more desirous of unions but their preferences are fine-grai...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... From the Webbs to the web: a new union form?

An inappropriate pessimism dominates discussions of the future of unions. Yes, union density is falling in the private sector and union influence is falling in Britain and many other countries. And, yes, the finances of ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Motivating Employee Owners in ESOP Firms: Human Resource Policies and Company Performance

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 ownershi...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Jobless recovery: whatever happened to the great American Jobs machine?

In terms of employment creation, the US economic expansion since 2001 has been the worst in over half a century. Richard Freeman and William Rodgers explore what's been going on in the labour market during this 'jobless ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Monitoring Colleagues at Work: Profit-Sharing, Employee Ownership, Broad-Based Stock Options and Workplace Performance in the United States

This study seeks to increase our understanding of worker reactions to shirking by analyzing two new questions on shirking from the 2002 General Social Science Survey (GSS). We developed the questions in order to illumina...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Are European Labor Markets As Awful As All That?

“The standard explanation of why advanced Europe has generated less work per adult than the US is that something is seriously amiss with EU labor markets. The theme of this piece is simple. Compared to an ideal competiti...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

White Hats or Don Quixotes? Human Rights Vigilantes in the Global Economy

With the continuing expansion of global economic integration, labor standards in developing countries have become a hot button issue. One result has been a proliferation of efforts to use the market to put pressure direc...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Can a Work Organization Have An Attitude Problem? The Impact of Workplaces on Employee Attitude and Economic Outcomes

In this study we examine whether a workplace can induce good or bad attitudes among its employees and whether any such ¿workplace attitudes¿ affect economic outcomes. This study analyzes responses of thousands of employe...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does Inequality in Skills Explain Inequality of Earnings Across Advanced Countries?

The distribution of earnings and the distribution of skills vary widely among advanced countries, with the major English-speaking countries, the US, UK, and Canada, having much greater inequality in both earnings and ski...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Marketization of Production and the US-Europe Employment Gap

Women work much more in the US than in Germany and most other EU economies. We find that the US¿German employment gap is not strongly related to cross-country differences in the level of pay or social benefits. The diffe...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Labour Market in the New Information Economy

The extension of information and communication technologies to economic activity is changing the labour market in important ways. This article shows that computerization and use of the Internet are associated with greate...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Shared Modes of Compensation and Firm Performance: UK Evidence.

This paper examines the use and consequences of shared compensation plans (profit sharing, profit related pay, SAYE schemes and company stock option plans) in a sample of UK workplaces and firms in the 1990s. The use of ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Institutional Differences and Economic Performance Among OECD Countries

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CentrePiece article

The Internet: report on CEP's new internet research programme

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CentrePiece article

Shared capitalism or apartheid economy

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CentrePiece article

A raw deal for the young

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CentrePiece article

Growth and corporate behaviour

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CEP discussion paper

Growing Into Work

This paper examines youth labor markets in OECD countries in the 1980s and 1990s, when the youth share of the population fell rapidly in most of these countries. Despite the decline in the youth share of the population a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Doing It Right? The US Labour Market Response to the 1980s/1990s

In this paper I examine both the positive and negative aspects of the US labor market response to the economic world of the 1980s/1990s. I review the economic development that created difficulties in the US and other adv...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does It Fit? Drawing Lessons from Differing Labor Practices

We are attentive to labor practices in foreign lands but as the quotations above indicate, we are unsure about the lessons to be drawn from these practices. Will something that works `over there' work here, or will it f...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Generating Equality and Eliminating Poverty the Swedish Way

Sweden has a remarkable record in reducing inequality and virtually eliminating poverty. This paper shows that: 1) Sweden achieved its egalitarian income distribution and eliminated poverty largely because of its system ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Legacy of Communist Labor Relations

This paper uses the International Social Science Programme (ISSP) surveys for Hungary and a set of Western countries, supplemented with related survey data for East Germany, Poland, and Slovenia, to examine the extent to...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Did the Thatcher Reforms Change British Labour Market Performance?

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CEP discussion paper

What Direction for Labor Market Institutions in Eastern and Central Europe?

In this paper I examine the evolution of labor relations institutions during the initial phase of marketization in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia and develop a model of changing support for reforms during the transi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Going different ways: Unionism in the US and other advanced OECD CountriesF

In this paper we compare the changing pattern of unionization in OECD countries, review existing evidence, and present new information on cross-country differences in union/non-union differentials in labour market outcom...Read more...