• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.129-146
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• 1997

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.115-147
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• 2003

This paper scrutinizes the robustness of the profit-sharing findings first employing an original panel data on the Employee Welfare Fund over the period from 1992 to 2000. In examining the effects of profit-sharing schemes on labor productivity, it controls for simultaneity among profit-sharing, production factors, and productivity using both the two-stage least squares procedure and the lagged variable method. The empirical results show that an increase in firm's contribution to the Employee Welfare Fund is associated with capital-embodied and disembodied productivity enhancement, which is both statistically and economically highly significant. The empirical results are in contrast with predictions of both agency and transaction cost theories, and they imply that more tax benefits and financial incentives for expansion of the Employee Welfare Fund should be required to get productivity gains.