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4 - The Labor-Managed Firm in the Long Run

from Part II - Perfection and Symmetry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 April 2018

Gregory K. Dow
Affiliation:
Simon Fraser University, British Columbia
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Summary

This chapter studies the labor-managed firm in a long run setting. Writers skeptical of the LMF have argued that such firms have defective investment incentives because members will place no weight on investment returns arriving after their planned date of departure from the firm. This has become known as 'the horizon problem'. However, such problems only arise if the LMF is constrained in artificial ways that are not required by the principle of workers' control. This point is established through a dynamic generalization of the Sertel-Dow model from chapter 3. Given competitive membership markets, LMFs evaluate collective production plans using the criterion of present value maximization, and thus make investment decisions that are identical to those of conventional firms. Use of the present value criterion is supported unanimously by individual firm members at each point in time, regardless of their intended departure dates. This result goes through regardless of whether the LMF owns capital assets or rents them. Therefore, as long as markets are complete and competitive, control rights can be assigned to workers without endangering allocative efficiency.
Type
Chapter
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The Labor-Managed Firm
Theoretical Foundations
, pp. 51 - 63
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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