If management has high private benefits and a small equity stake, managers and workers are natural allies against takeover threats. Two forces are at play. First, managers can transform employees into a “shark repellent” through long-term labor...Read more
We study the relative effectiveness of exit (divestment and boycott) and voice (engagement) strategies in promoting socially desirable outcomes in companies. We show that in a competitive world exit is less effective than voice in pushing firms...Read more
If unemployment insurance is more generous, workers should demand less implicit insurance from their employers: firm- and government-provided insurance should be substitutes. Using a firm-level international panel dataset, we investigate this...Read more
We study the human-capital effects of private equity buyouts in Germany. We conduct matched-sample difference-in-differences estimations at the establishment and at the individual employee level with more than 152,000 buyout employees and a...Read more
Do employees who compare themselves to the CEO matter for executive compensation? We hypothesize that employees have relative wealth concerns and compare their wage to the CEO’s pay. Using German establishmentlevel wage data, we indeed show that...Read more
This paper presents findings from analysis of a dataset of labour laws, based on the Centre for Business Research Labour Regulation Index (CBR-LRI), which has recently been extended to cover 117 countries and the period from 1970 to 2013. The...Read more
We examine the potential for management-worker alliances when employees have substantial voting rights, and how such alliances affect the balance of power between managers and shareholders. We find that substantial employee voting rights...Read more
We develop a model of competition for managerial talent in which firms asymmetrically learn about the ability of their managers. In equilibrium, firms poach talent from competitors, even in the absence of gains from trade. Our main result is that...Read more
Retirement investing in the United States has changed dramatically. The classic defined-benefit (DB) plan has largely been replaced by the defined contribution (DC) plan. With the latter, individual employees’ decisions about how much to save for...Read more
During the revelation of the Weinstein scandal and the emergence of the #MeToo movement, firms with a corporate culture that does not discriminate on the basis of sex, proxied by having women among the five highest paid executives, earn excess...Read more
This paper reports the findings of a recent survey of 1019 individuals to learn about their commitment to and perceived value from personal and organizational higher purpose, and examines the implications of the findings for corporate governance...Read more
Two prominent progressive senators, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, have recently proposed that employees should be allowed to elect 40 to 45 percent of the directors of large corporations. If implemented, such a reform would bring U.S....Read more