Derek C. Jones

Growth and Regional Inequality in China During the Reform Era

An arrangement that for receiving smoking residue that comprises an ash receiver body (22) that receives a cigarette with its burning end close to tube (28). A discharging device (30) that removes smoke and incinerates ashes from the receiver by wind rushing past it, and a residue storage receptacle (24) that stores, out of sight, all tobacco product residue. The invention provides a simple, convenient, inexpensive, environmentally conscious device that requires less cleaning and is less offensive to non-smoking passengers than a conventional vehicle ash receiver.

The productivity effects of worker participation: Producer cooperatives in western economies

The paper presents econometric estimates of productivity effects of various forms of worker participation in Western producer cooperatives. While the effects vary across institutional settings, the overall effect is found to be positive. The positive effects are found most uniformly with respect to profit sharing and, to a slightly lesser extent, individual capital (share) ownership and participation in decision-making by workers. The size of individual worker loans to the coop is unrelated to productivity, while collective capital ownership exhibits an insignificant or a negative productivity effect.

Labor-managed cooperatives and private firms in north central Italy: An empirical comparison

The authors analyze the differences between the behavior of private firms and that of producer cooperatives in a matched sample of the two organizational types from the regions of Emilia Romagna and Toscana in North-Central Italy, where producer cooperatives are numerous. Individual firm-level surveys provide new detailed comparative data on key issues such as investment, productivity, wages, employment, and industrial relations. Differences between the two types of firm are found in labor relations, employment, pay, production methods, the relationship to the external market environment, and the level of economic performance. The authors find no significant differences in investment horizons or criteria for finance, despite theoretical assertions to the contrary. The cooperatives apparently have higher productivity, more labor-intensive production methods, lower income differentials, and a more tranquil industrial relations environment than the private firms.

Participation, profit sharing, worker ownership and efficiency in Italian producer cooperatives

This paper analyses the productivity effects of worker participation in management, profit-sharing and worker ownership. It develops an estimating framework and applies it to firm-level data for Italian producer cooperatives, one of the largest and fastest growing systems of producer cooperatives in industrialized Western economies. The results are of particular interest because they provide a systematic test of numerous hypotheses from the literature on incentives and efficiency in participatory and labour-managed firms. Moreover, they may help in formulating public policy guidelines in the numerous Western countries that consider participation, worker ownership of assets and profitsharing as possible means for increasing workplace democracy, stimulating productivity and reducing unemployment owing to plant shutdowns.1 The results of our study are more conclusive than all existing findings with respect to efficiency of participatory, profit-sharing and worker-owned firms because we were able to use an unusually large panel of firms. The firms are both small and large (equivalent to the Fortune 500), and the variable values for participation, profit-sharing and worker ownership vary widely both crosssectionally and over time (see Table 1). Since our data relate exclusively to

The Scope, Nature, and Effects of Employee Stock Ownership Plans in Japan

Using data for various years, including new data for 1973–84, the authors examine the scope, nature, determinants, and effects of Japanese employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs). In 1988, of firms listed on Japans eight stock exchange markets, 91% had an ESOP, and the average (non-executive) employee plan participant owned stock worth about

How Does Employee Involvement Stack Up? The Effects of Human Resource Management Policies on Performance in a Retail Firm

14,000. Probit estimates for a sample of manufacturing firms show that firms were more likely to adopt ESOPs when recent business performance was below average, the capital/labor ratio was relatively low, and employment growth was relatively fast. Evidence is also found that ESOPs enhanced enterprise productivity. The authors argue that ESOPs have played an important, and largely overlooked, role in the success of the Japanese economy over the past two decades.

The Determinants of Stock Option Compensation: Evidence from Finland

The impact of innovative human resource management (HRM) practices on performance is investigated using panel data for all units of a retail firm. Our rich data include measures of the operating environment, important dimensions of core inputs, and information on HRM environments, and output is measured as value added. We estimate augmented production functions, including both establishment and manager fixed effects. When employees have opportunities to participate, and receive appropriate information and feedback from their supervisors, productivity is enhanced. Thus, even in settings where employees do simple tasks and are relatively low-skilled, participatory work environments can enhance business performance.

The effects of privatization on productive efficiency: evidence from the Baltic republics

A new, long, and rich panel data set consisting of all Finnish publicly traded firms is used to study how firm characteristics and stock market developments influence the adoption and targeting of stock option compensation. Stock option adoption is found to be a procyclical phenomenon. Findings from firm-level econometric analysis often corroborate those based on U.S. data, but important differences also emerge. Findings include: (i) firms with higher market value per employee are more likely to use stock option compensation; (ii) share returns from the past year affect the adoption of targeted stock options, but not broad-based plans; (iii) our results are consistent with the hypothesis that selective and broad-based plans arise as solutions to differing monitoring difficulties. Broad-based schemes are observed when production is human capital-intensive and employee performance is hard to monitor, while selective schemes are adopted when ownership is dispersed and therefore owners may have weak incentives to monitor management.

The Productivity Effects of Worker Directors and Financial Participation by Employees in the Firm: The Case of British Retail Cooperatives

By using new and unusual data sets for large samples of firms in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania we find that, since privatization, diverse patterns of enterprise ownership have emerged and ownership configurations are quite dynamic. To test competing theories on the productivity effects of alternative ownership structures, identical cross sectional production functions specifications are estimated for each country for varying years during 1993-1996. While the effects of private ownership upon productivity are found to vary considerably over time and across countries, productivity effects are always found to be either zero or positive, thus providing partial support for the hypothesis that state ownership is less efficient than private ownership. Findings are mixed concerning hypotheses on the effects of particular ownership structures. Often (e.g. for Lithuania) estimates indicate that all forms of private ownership have zero productivity effects. However, some estimates for Estonia provide support for the mainstream hypothesis that outside (and especially foreign) ownership is preferred to insider ownership. But in other estimates (again for Estonia) majority ownership by employees is found to deliver better business performance than majority ownership by managers (thus refuting the hypothesis that the preferred form of insider ownership is ownership by managers).

Determinants of the incidence of group incentives: evidence from Canada

In British retail cooperatives, workers have long had the opportunity to participate financially in their enterprises, through such mechanisms as employee ownership, and to serve on boards. Using data from a 1978 sample of 50 cooperatives, the author of this paper presents econometric estimates of the effects on co-op productivity of these channels of participation. He finds that the presence of worker directors modestly increases productivity, whereas, surprisingly, financial participation in the firm by employees reduces productivity. The net impact on productivity of both forms of participation is small but positive.