Abstract This paper investigates whether employee participation in ownership through an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) is positively associated with productivity measures. This issue is an appropriate tax policy concern because, although ESOPs were introduced into the law for the primary purpose of broadening the ownership of wealth, it was expected that ESOPs would also lead to increased productivity. Production functions augmented with binary variables for various retirement plans, including ESOPs, were estimated using panel data procedures. The contention that participation in ownership leads to efficiency gains was not generally supported; however, predictions that participation in ownership leads to inefficiencies were not supported in any estimation.
Dunbar et al. (Sun,) studied this question.