Do investments in human capital lead to employee share ownership? Evidence from French establishments.

Investments in human capital can create a hold-up problem whereby both employers and employees exploit the bargaining weaknesses of the other. Employee share ownership (ESO) can mitigate this hold-up problem because it can align interests, develop loyalty, signal good-will and lock in employees. Previous studies have shown positive relationships between company investments in human capital and the use of ESO consistent with this argument but have been unable to identify the direction of causality. Using panel data from the French REPONSE survey, the findings indicate that significant and continuous investments in human capital take place prior to the implementation of ESO

Employee Share Ownership Plans: A Review

This paper reviews the main strands of research on employee share ownership over the last forty years. It considers research findings in the literature on types of share ownership, the incidence of share ownership plans, the ‘determinants’ of the use of share plans by companies, influences upon employee participation in share plans, the effect of share ownership on employee attitudes and behaviour, the effect on company performance, and the relationship between share ownership plans and other forms of employee participation. The paper does not provide a comprehensive review of the literature on these topics: instead it highlights the main findings that have emerged in the literature to date, and suggests some avenues for future research. It is suggested that majority worker ownership is different in character and effects from ‘mainstream’ minority employee share plans in large companies but the literature has tended to conflate the two. It is argued that future research needs to distinguish the various forms of employee share ownership if the impact of share ownership is to be more precisely calibrated

Patterns of Employee Particpation and Industrial Democracy in UK ESOPs

This paper examines the institutional characteristics of UK ESOPs and considers the extent to which ESOPs extend employee participation and industrial democracy. It is suggested that ESOPs in themselves do not extend industrial democracy. Instead patterns of employee participation are substantially determined by the goals of those primarily responsible for establishing the ESOP. Three constellations of ESOPs are discerned on the basis of their participative characteristics: `technical ESOPs' where there is little or no development of industrial democracy; `paternalist ESOPs' which tend to develop individualistic forms of employee participation; and `representative ESOPs' where new institutions are created to give some opportunity for involvement of employee representatives in top decisions.

Who invests too much in employer stock, and why do they do it? Some evidence from uk stock ownership plans

Using data from a survey of employee stock-owners in seven UK companies, the author examines the determinants of excessive ownership of company stock in savings portfolios. The paper draws on the insights from the recent 401 (k) literature and examines the role of attitudes as well as demographic characteristics. By using a survey of employees it is possible to investigate the role of these factors more precisely than in much of the 401 (k) literature. The results indicate that loyalty and familiarity are important determinants of concentration in employer stock. Income is important too: the results imply that as savings rise with income, familiarity especially leads employees to channel much of this into employer stock

Do investments in human capital lead to employee share ownership? Evidence from French establishments

Investments in human capital can create a hold-up problem whereby both employers and employees exploit the bargaining weaknesses of the other. Employee share ownership (ESO) can mitigate this hold-up problem because it can align interests, develop loyalty, signal good-will and lock in employees. Previous studies have shown positive relationships between company investments in human capital and the use of ESO consistent with this argument but have been unable to identify the direction of causality. Using panel data from the French REPONSE survey, the findings indicate that significant and continuous investments in human capital take place prior to the implementation of ESO

Time Dependent Clustering Analysis of the Second BATSE Gamma-Ray Burst Catalog

A time dependent two-point correlation-function analysis of the BATSE 2B catalog finds no evidence of burst repetition. As part of this analysis, we discuss the effects of sky exposure on the observability of burst repetition and present the equation describing the signature of burst repetition in the data. For a model of all burst repetition from a source occurring in less than five days we derive upper limits on the number of bursts in the catalog from repeaters and model-dependent upper limits on the fraction of burst sources that produce multiple outbursts.Comment: To appear in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, uuencoded compressed PostScript, 11 pages with 4 embedded figure

The overlap operator as a continued fraction

We use a continued fraction expansion of the sign-function in order to obtain a five dimensional formulation of the overlap lattice Dirac operator. Within this formulation the inverse of the overlap operator can be calculated by a single Krylov space method where nested conjugate gradient procedures are avoided. We show that the five dimensional linear system can be made well conditioned using equivalence transformations on the continued fractions. This is of significant importance when dynamical overlap fermions are simulated.Comment: 3 pages, 1 figure, talk presented by U. Wenger at Lattice2001(chiral

Studies on Methods of Measuring the Nitrate Assimilating Power of Soils

The work of many investigators has demonstrated the fact that nitrate nitrogen disappears from soils to which organic materials of a high carbon-nitrogen ratio have been added. Doryland in 1916 claimed that soils have a definite nitrate consuming power and that additions of organic matter such as straw, dextrose, or other soluble sugars stimulated the disappearance of the nitrates. He attributed this disappearance to the fact that the nitrates were assimilated by microorganisms but not lost from the soil