TY  - JOUR
AU  - Bryson,Alex
AU  - Freeman,Richard
TI  - How Does Shared Capitalism Affect Economic Performance in the UK?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14235
PY  - 2008
Y2  - August 2008
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14235
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14235.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Alex Bryson
Senior Research Fellow
National Institute of Economic and Social Research
2 Dean Trench Street
Smith Square
London  England
SW1P 3HE
Tel: +44 207 654 1901
Fax: +44 207 654 1900
E-Mail: a.bryson@niesr.ac.uk

Richard B. Freeman
NBER
1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA  02138
Tel: 617/868-3900
Fax: 617/868-2742
E-Mail: freeman@nber.org
M3  - presented at "Shared Capitalism Conference", October 6-7, 2006
AB  - 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 pay for performance, employee share ownership, and stock options--and their link to productivity.  It shows that shared capitalism has grown in the UK, as it has in the US; that different forms of shared capitalist pay complement each other and other labor practices in the sense that firms use them together more than they would if they chose modes of pay and work practices independently; and that workplaces switch among schemes frequently, which suggests that they have trouble optimizing and the transactions cost of switching are relatively low.  Among the single schemes, share ownership has the clearest positive association with productivity, but its impact is largest when firms combine it with other forms of shared capitalist pay and modes of organization.
ER  -