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In this paper, we claim that worker rights (including collective bargaining rights, employment protection, and income security) promote productivity growth. We argue that cooperative labor-management relations encourage workers to make positive contributions to technical and organizational innovations that raise labor productivity, and that an industrial relations system that secures strong worker rights fosters cooperative labor-management relations. These arguments are supported by an empirical analysis of long-run productivity growth in 15 advanced capitalist countries. We first develop an index of worker rights and show its positive effect on several indicators of labor-management cooperation. We then develop an index combining measures of worker rights and labor-management cooperation and show its positive effect on the rate of growth of labor productivity.

The historical relationship between capital and labor has evolved in the past few decades. One particularly noteworthy development is the rise of shared capitalism, a system in which workers have become partial owners of their firms and thus, in effect, both employees and stockholders. Profit sharing arrangements and gain-sharing bonuses, which tie compensation directly to a firm's performance, also reflect this new attitude toward labor. Shared Capitalism at Work analyzes the effects of this trend on workers and firms. The contributors focus on four main areas: the fraction of firms that participate in shared capitalism programs in the United States and abroad, the factors that enable these firms to overcome classic free rider and risk problems, the effect of shared capitalism on firm performance, and the impact of shared capitalism on worker well-being. This volume provides essential studies for understanding the increasingly important role of shared capitalism in the modern workplace