Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-x5cpj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-29T17:27:26.126Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

16 - Asset Ownership and Work Incentives

from Part VII - Opportunism Problems II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 April 2018

Gregory K. Dow
Affiliation:
Simon Fraser University, British Columbia
Get access

Summary

This chapter explores the interactions between asset ownership and work incentives in a repeated game framework where effort supply and side payments are self-enforced. Incentives are provided by the threat that employment relationships will end through quitting or firing. The model allows flexible transfers among agents and incorporates match-specific investments in physical assets and skills. Two organizational forms are compared: outside ownership, where someone external to the production team owns the firm's physical assets, and joint ownership, where the firm's workforce owns these assets. It is shown that these two ownership systems are equivalent. For every point along the second-best frontier of an outside ownership economy, there is a point on the frontier of a joint ownership economy that gives all agents identical present values, and conversely. This isomorphism arises because the total surplus from the continuation of relationships among input suppliers is identical across the two systems. When an allocation is second-best in an outside ownership economy, it is impossible to obtain a Pareto improvement by switching to joint ownership, and vice versa.
Type
Chapter
Information
The Labor-Managed Firm
Theoretical Foundations
, pp. 269 - 296
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×