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How firms are both an actor in the economy and a stage for interactions among the firms
employees, managers and owners.
That the balance of bargaining power among employees, managers and owners affects
how the mutual gains created in the firm are distributed.
Why hiring labour is different from buying other goods and services and why the contract
between the employer and the employee is incomplete.
That firms do not pay the lowest wages possible; but instead set wages to motivate
employees to work effectively, to stay with the firm, and to make it practical for the firms
to recruit new workers when they need them.
How the wages that firms pay their employees are influenced by factors that change the
balance of bargaining power among the firms actors.
What the wage curve is; and what it can tell us about the relationship between wages
and unemployment in the economy as a whole.
See www.core-econ.org for the full interactive version of The Economy by The CORE Project.
Guide yourself through key concepts with clickable figures, test your understanding with multiple choice
questions, look up key terms in the glossary, read full mathematical derivations in the Leibniz supplements,
watch economists explain their work in Economists in Action and much more.
Funded by the Institute for New Economic Thinking with additional funding from Azim Premji University and Sciences Po
firms are not flash mobs. Like any organisation, firms have a decision-making
process and ways of imposing their decisions on the people in the firm. Figure 1 is a
simplified picture of the firms actors and decision-making structure.
INSIDE THE FIRM
Board of Directors (Owners)
Manager
Workers
salaries and owners profits in a successful firm, as well as other policies such as
conditions of work, managerial perks, and the critical issue of who makes key
decisionssuch as whether Apple should assemble iPhones in China or the US.
2.0
1.8
1.6
1.4
1.2
1.0
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
2010
2000
1990
1980
1970
1960
1950
1940
1930
1920
WALMART
MCDONALD'S
FORD
FEDEX
PROCTOR & GAMBLE
INTEL
DELL
AMAZON
1910
1900
Most firms in the US are much smaller, but in all of the rich economies most people
work for large firms. In the US, half of private sector employees work in firms with at
least 1,000 employees. The main reason is that owners of firms make more money if
they can expand to a larger size, and people with money to invest get higher returns
from owning stock in large firms. Employees in large firms are also paid more. Figure
2 shows the growth of some highly successful US firms.
An important reason that a large firm may be more profitable than a small firm is
that the large firm can produce its output at lower cost per unit. The reduction in the
cost per unit of output as a firm produces more units may result from the fact that
large-scale production uses fewer inputs per unit of output, termed economies of scale.
Economies of scale may occur for engineering reasons: transporting more of a liquid
requires a larger pipe, but doubling the capacity of the pipe increases the diameter of
the pipe (and the material necessary to construct it) by much less than a factor of two,
as our EINSTEIN shows.
Economies of scale may also result from specialisation among members of the firm,
allowing employees to do the task at which they are best. Cost per unit will also fall,
as the firm produces more products, if there is a fixed cost that is required for the
firm to produce even a single unit, which then does not increase for additional units.
An example would be the cost of research and product design, acquiring a licence
to engage in production, or obtaining a patent for a particular technique. Marketing
expenses such as advertising are another fixed cost. A 30-second advertisement
during the television coverage of the US Super Bowl football game in 2014 cost $4m, a
cost that would be justifiable only if the product would sell a large number of units as
a result.
The cost of a firms attempt to gain favourable treatment by government bodies
through lobbying, contributions to election campaigns and public relations
expenditures are also a kind of fixed cost. These expenses are incurred more or less
independently of the level of the firms output. We return to the question of fixed
costs in the next unit.
Large firms are also able to purchase their inputs on more favourable terms than
smaller firms. Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart, had a motto: always low prices.
This is partly possible because of the bargaining power that Walmart has when it
purchases from smaller suppliers.
An important source of economies of scale occurs when people are more likely to buy
a product or service if it has a lot of users already. Examples are telephones, which
are more useful the more people you can call, or software, which is more useful when
everybody is using compatible versions. These demand-side scale economies are
called network effects, and there are many examples in technology-related markets.
Economies of scale, and other reasons why producing on a large scale reduces costs,
are a powerful influence on firm size, and often make production by a small group of
people too costly for them to compete with larger firms.
On the other hand, economies of scale are likely to stretch only so far. Eventually,
an organisation could become so large that some costs might increase with scale.
For example, in large organisations it might become costly to coordinate across
the different parts of the production process, to manage effectively, and to respond
quickly and effectively to change. Economies might give way to diseconomies of scale.
the firms profits legally belong to the owners of the business. They own
whatever remains after revenues (the proceeds from sale of the products) are used
to pay employees and managers, suppliers, creditors and taxes. Profit is the residual:
that is, whats left of the revenues after these payments. The owners claim it, which is
why they are called residual claimants. Managers (unless they are also owners) are not
residual claimants. Neither are workers. A job done well by a manager or a worker,
which causes the firms revenues to increase, will benefit the owners; but unless it
results in a promotion, a bonus or a salary increase, it will not benefit the actor. This
is one reason why when we consider the firm as a stage. Not all the actors have the
same interests.
In small enterprises, the owners are typically also the managers, in charge of
operational and strategic decisions. As an example, consider a restaurant owned by a
sole proprietor, who decides on the menu, hours of operation, marketing strategies,
choice of suppliers, and the size and compensation of the workforce. In most cases
the owner will try to maximise the profits of the enterprise by providing the kinds of
food and ambiance the people want at competitive prices. Unlike Apple, the owner
cannot outsource dishwashing or table service to a low-wage location.
In large corporations, there are typically many owners. Most of them play no part
in management. The owners of the firm are the individuals and institutions, such
as pension funds, that own the shares issued by the firm. By issuing shares to the
10
the firm does not solely manage, as Smith put it, other peoples money. The
decision-makers in a firm decide on the use of other peoples labour too: the efforts
of their employees. People participate in firms because they can do better if they are
part of the firm than if they are not. As in all voluntary economic interactions there
are mutual gains. But just as conflicts arise between owners and managers, there
will generally be differences between owners and managers on the one hand, and
employees on the other, about how the firm will use the strength, creativity and other
skills of its employees. Firms in capitalist economies sell goods or services with the
aim of making a profit. A firms profits (before the payment of taxes) depend on three
things:
1. Costs of acquiring the inputs necessary for the production process.
2. Output: how much these inputs produce.
3. Sales revenues received from selling goods or services.
In Unit 2 we saw how a firm might increase output without raising costs by adopting
a new technology. In the next unit we study how the firm decides what price to
charge. Here we study how firms seek to minimise the cost of acquiring the necessary
labour to produce the goods and services that they sell. We will see that this is not
accomplished by paying the lowest possible wages, because the employer faces the
problems of worker motivation, worker retention and worker recruitment.
Hiring employees is different to buying other goods and services. When we buy a
shirt, or pay someone to mow a lawn, it is clear what we get for our cash. If we dont
get it, we dont pay. If we have already paid, we go to court and get our money back.
But a firm cannot write an enforceable employment contract specifying the exact
tasks employees have to perform.
This is true for three reasons:
1. When the firm writes the contract for the employment of a worker, it cannot know
exactly what it will need the worker to do, because this will be determined by
necessarily unforeseen future events.
2. It would be impractical or too costly for the firm to observe exactly how much
effort each employee puts in to the job.
3. Even if the firm somehow acquired this information, it could not be the basis of
an enforceable contract. To understand this, consider a restaurant owner who
would like his staff to serve customers in a pleasant manner. Imagine how difficult
it would be for a court to decide whether the owner can withhold wages from a
waitress because she had not smiled often enough.
11
12
Before we show why this is true, think about situations, both past and present, in
which an employer can force a worker to carry out orders by threatening physical
punishment, or worse. Slaves, for example, worked hard under the threat of a
whipping.
In most capitalist economies firms cannot threaten physical coercion. The
employment contract is a voluntary exchange. Even if their bargaining powers are
very different, both parties must agree.
A solution that avoided physical coercion that was widely used in the past was to pay
employees for each unit of output they produced: for example, paying employees
at a clothing factory $2 for each garment. In the late 19th century the pay of more
than half of US manufacturing workers was based on their output. This method of
payment, known as piece rate, provides the employee with an incentive to exert effort;
employees take home more pay if they make more garments.
Piece rates are not widely used in modern economies. At the turn of the 21st century
less than 5% of manufacturing workers in the US were paid piece rates and, beyond
the manufacturing sector, piece rates are used even less often. Manufacturing
accounts for only a small proportion of employment in developed economies (9%
of non-farm employment in the US), so piece rates are an extremely rare form of
compensation across the economy.
there are many reasons why people put in a good days work. For many, doing
a good job is its own reward; doing anything else would violate the employees work
ethic. Even for those not intrinsically motivated to work hard and well, feelings of
responsibility for other employees, or for ones employer, may provide strong work
motivations. For others, hard work is just a way that the employee can reciprocate
a feeling of gratitude to the employer for providing a job with good working
conditions.
But, in the background, there is another reason to do a good job: fear of losing the
job, or of missing the opportunity to be promoted into a position that has greater
security against being laid off.
The economist Joseph Stiglitz (who won the Nobel prize for his work in how markets
function) and his co-author Carl Shapiro wrote an influential academic paper in 1984
about Unemployment as a worker discipline device. More than 100 years earlier
Karl Marx had made the same point in his famous book Capital, in which he described
unemployed labour as an industrial reserve army.
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14
KARL MARX
Adam Smith, writing at the birth of
capitalism in the 18th century, was
to become its most famous advocate.
Karl Marx (1818-1883), who watched
capitalism mature in the industrial towns
of England, was to become its most
famous critic.
Born in Prussia (now part of Germany),
he distinguished himself as a student
at a Jesuit high school only by his
rebelliousness. In 1842 he became a writer
and editor for the Rheinische Zeitung, a
liberal newspaper, which was then closed
by the government, after which he moved
Source: John Mayall [Public domain], via
to Paris, met Friedrich Engels, with whom
Wikimedia Commons.
he collaborated in writing The Communist
Manifesto (1848), and moved to London in
1849. At first Marx and his wife Jenny lived in poverty. He earned money by writing
about political events in Europe for the New York Daily Tribune.
Marx saw capitalism as just the latest in a succession of economic arrangements in
which people have lived since pre-history. Inequality was not unique to capitalism,
he observedslavery, feudalism, and most other economic systems had shared this
feature, but capitalism also generated perpetual change and growth in output.
He was the first economist to understand why the capitalist economy was the
most dynamic in human history. Perpetual change arose, Marx observed, because
capitalists could survive only by introducing new technologies and products, finding
ways of lowering costs, and by reinvesting their profits into businesses that would
perpetually grow.
This, he claimed, inevitably caused conflict between employers and workers. Buying
and selling goods in a market appeared to be transactions among equals: nobody
is in a position to order anyone else to buy or sell. In the labour market, in which
owners of capital are buyers and workers are the sellers, the appearance of freedom
and equality was, to Marx, an illusion.
Employers did not buy the employees work, because this cannot be purchased, as
we have seen in this unit. Instead the wage allowed the employer to rent the worker
and to command workers inside the firm. Workers were not inclined to disobey
because they might lose their job and join, in the phrase that Marx used in Capital
(1867), the reserve army of the unemployed. Marx thought that the power wielded
by employers over workers was a core defect of capitalism.
Marx also had influential views on history, politics, and sociology. He thought that
history was decisively shaped by scarcity and technological progress interacting
with economic institutions, and that political conflicts arose from conflicts about the
distribution of income and the organisation of these institutions. He thought that
capitalism, by organising production and allocation in anonymous markets, created
atomised individuals instead of integrated communities.
In recent years economists have returned to themes in Marxs work to help explain
economic crises. Among these themes: the firm as an arena of conflict and of the
exercise of power (this unit), the role of technological progress (Units 1 and 2) and
the problems created by inequality (Unit 19).
In a capitalist economy, the owners and managers of the firm determine who can
work there. Recall from the previous unit that ownership of something means the
right to exclude others from its use, so ownership of a factory or office gives the
owners the right to hire and fire. In this way the owners and managers of the firm not
only determine the wage of the employee, but can also terminate employment if they
are not satisfied that the employee is working hard or well enough. If a firm is paying
a wage higher than the lowest wage at which the worker would take a job, then the
worker has an incentive to work hard and well, so as not to lose that job. Owners and
managers set wages and working conditions so that losing a job is usually a serious
economic problem for the employee.
Because owners and managers decide whether an employee stays or goes, they can
use the implicit threat of being fired to make the worker perform in ways that that
person would not perform if the threat wasnt made. This means that the owners
and managers have power over employees: in this context power means the ability to
use the threat of imposing a serious cost on another, to induce the other to act in the
interests of the person wielding power, when the reverse is not true.
The employment rent is a measure of what we call the cost of job loss. Note that we can
use the same reasoning in the employment of managers by the owners of the firm.
The main reason owners wield power over managers is that they can fire them, and
so eliminate their managerial employment rents.
15
16
17
10
Hourly wages, $
Wage
Disutility
of effort
1.5
0
What Maria gets should she not lose her job today
Net benefit
from working
Opportunity
cost of working
Weeks
36
Expected duration
of unemployment
Figure 3. Marias employment rent for a given effort and $10 wage: an economy without
unemployment benefit.
INTERACT
Follow figures click-by-click in the full interactive version at www.core-econ.org.
At time 0, she receives a weekly wage after the payment of taxes and other
deductions (indicated by the horizontal blue line), which she will continue to receive
for the foreseeable future if she keeps her job. Marias wages allow her to buy goods
and services that raise her utility. But she dislikes putting in as much effort as her
employer requires at work, so a proportion of her wages is merely compensating her
for the disutility of working. Her disutility of working is also termed her opportunity
cost of working because it is what she gives up by working (she could be not working
and free of the unpleasant experience of working harder than shed like).
The difference between her wage per hour and her opportunity cost of working
(disutility of effort per hour) is the net benefit per hour on the job that she receives
from being employed.
If Maria were to lose her job at time 0, however, she would no longer receive her
wages (indicated by the horizontal red line); and this unfortunate state persists as
long as her spell of unemployment goes on. Of course, she no longer has to put in
18
19
Wage
Unemployment
benefit
12
Hourly wage, $
Unemployment
benefit plus the
disutility of effort
Net benefit
from working
5
Disutility of effort when employed
3
Opportunity
cost of working
Weeks
44
Expected duration
of unemployment
Figure 4. Juans employment rent for a given effort and a $12 wage: an economy with
unemployment benefit.
Suppose the unemployment benefit is equal to $3 per hour, or $3 x 40 = $120 per
week. Juans wage is higher than Marias; he earns $12 per hour, which translates
to a weekly wage of $480. In addition, Juans disutility from working is higher than
Marias at $2 x 40 = $80 per week and if he does lose his job, he can expect to be
unemployed for longer, 44 weeks instead of 36. How does Juans employment rent
compare to Marias? Juans net loss occasioned by losing his job is equal to:
($480 $120 $80) (44 weeks) = $12,320
We can see from the calculation, and from the size of the shaded blue area in Figure
4, that Juans rent is a similar size to Marias, even though we have supposed that he
is unemployed for longer. Unemployment benefit reduces the employment rent. The
social safety net introduced by Juans government dramatically reduces employment
rents in the economy by lowering the cost of job loss. Another way of expressing this
is to say that the existence of unemployment benefits increases the opportunity cost
of working.
You can see from Figure 4 that for a given wage of $12 an increase in the duration
of unemployment or a decrease in the unemployment benefit would have similar
effects: both increase Juans employment rent (increasing the blue rectangle in the
figure). But this does not make Juan better off: his rent did not get larger because his
wage went up; it increased because his situation without his current job got worse.
The increase in the employment rent makes him more worried about losing his job.
So an increase in the duration of employment or a decrease in the unemployment
benefit will motivate Juan to work harder because the cost of job loss has gone up. To
find out how to calculate an employment rent using probabilities, see LEIBNIZ 8.
20
LEIBNIZ
For mathematical derivations of key concepts, download the Leibniz boxes from
www.core-econ.org.
What would be the effect of an improvement in his working conditions (his employer
installs air conditioning, for example)? Return to Figure 4. The effect would be to
reduce the disutility of effort so, if nothing else changed, his employment rent would
go up because he would value his job more (he would still be making $12 an hour and
working at half speed, but now enjoying his time on the job a bit more due to the air
conditioning). Because the cost to him of losing this job is now higher than before, he
would be willing to work harder to avoid bearing the cost of job loss. As we will see,
this is one of the reasons why owners and managers of firms care about providing
their employees with amenities, such as air conditioning, that they prefer.
RONALD COASE AND KARL MARX ON THE FIRM AND ITS EMPLOYEES
The writer George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) joked that If all economists were laid
end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.
This is amusing, but not entirely true.
For example, the two leading economists of the early 19th centuryMalthus and
Ricardowere political opponents. The latter often sided with businessmen, for
example in supporting freer imports of grain to Great Britain so as to reduce food
prices and allow lower wages. Malthus opposed Ricardo and supported the Corn
Laws that restricted grain imports, a position favoured by the landed gentry. But the
two economists independently developed the same theory of land rents, which we
still use today.
Even more striking is that two economists from different centuries and political
orientations came up with similar ways of understanding the firm and its employees.
In the 19th century Marx contrasted the way buyers and sellers interact on a
market, voluntarily engaging in trade, with how the firm is organised as a topdown structure, one in which employers issue orders and workers follow them. He
called markets a very Eden of the innate rights of man, but described firms as
exploit[ing] labour-power to the greatest possible extent.
When the economist Ronald Coase (who we will study in more detail in Unit 10) died
in 2013, he was eulogised by Forbes magazine as the greatest of the many great
University of Chicago economists. The motto of Forbes is The capitalist tool, and
the University of Chicago has a reputation as the centre of conservative economic
thinking.
Yet, like Marx, Coase stressed the central role of authority in the firms contractual
relations: Note the character of the contract into which an [employee] enters that is
employed within a firm... for certain remuneration [he] agrees to obey the directions
of the entrepreneur. Coase defined the firm by its political structure: If a workman
moves from department Y to department X, he does not go because of a change in
prices but because he is ordered to do so.
Coase sought to understand why firms exist at all, calling them islands of conscious
power in this ocean of unconscious cooperation.
Both based their thinking on careful empirical observation, and they arrived at a
similar understanding of the hierarchy of the firm. They disagreed, however, on the
consequences of what they observed: Coase thought that the hierarchy of the firm
was a cost-reducing way to do business. Marx thought that the coercive authority
of the boss over the worker limited the employees freedom. But, like Malthus and
Ricardo, Coase and Marx disagreed while advancing economics with a common idea.
employment rents provide the incentive for workers to work harder than
they would choose. The managers of the firm occasionally get some information
on how hard or well a worker is working. This is not enough to implement a piece
rate contract, but more than enough to fire the worker if the news is not good. The
employee knows that the chance of the employer getting bad news decreases the
21
22
0.5
Feasible set
Reservation
wage
12
20
Hourly wage, $
The workers best response function rises as the hourly wage increases: the worker
works harder when the wage is higher because a higher wage means the cost of job
loss is higher. Look back at Figure 4. If the wage were $13 instead of $12 the blue
rectangle representing Juans employment rent would be larger.
But the best response function also becomes flatter as it increases. This is because, as
the level of effort approaches the maximum possible, the disutility of effort becomes
very great and so it takes a larger employment rent (and hence a larger wage) to
induce effort from the worker. Just like the production functions of the student and
farmer in Unit 3, an employer who pays the worker a high wage faces diminishing
marginal returns. In other words, the higher the initial wage, the smaller the increase
in effort the firm gets from a $1 per hour increase in wages. For example, a small
wage increase from $8 to $12 per hour increases effort from 0.15 to 0.5. At that point,
however, it takes a much larger wage increase, from $12 to $20 per hour, if the firm
wishes to increase effort by just a small amount (from 0.5 to 0.8). To discover the
properties of a workers best response function using calculus, see LEIBNIZ 9.
If we pick a particular wageeffort combination on the workers best response
function, we can think about the size of the workers employment rent. The shaded
blue area in Figure 6 shows the workers employment rent for the combination at
point Z in Figure 5, where wages are $12 per hour and effort is 0.5.
23
Unemployment
benefit plus the
disutility of effort
Unemployment
benefit
What worker gets should they not lose their job today
What worker gets should they lose their job today
12
Wage
Hourly wage, $
24
Net benefit
from working
Opportunity cost of
working (providing
effort at 0.5)
Weeks
44
Expected duration
of unemployment
Figure 6. The workers employment rent when wages are $12 per hour.
the owners and managers know that they cannot get the worker to provide
more effort than is given by the best response function shown in Figure 5. The firm
can choose any wageeffort combination on (or to the right of) the best response
function. This is the firms feasible set when making hiring decisions and is shown by
the shaded red area. Any combination outside of the feasible set cannot be achieved
because the worker is not willing to provide that amount of effort for the wages
earned. The firm will always choose a combination on the boundary of the feasible
set (on the best response function) because it gets the highest effort possible for the
wage it pays.
To decide on the wage, managers and owners use the firms profit equation:
Higher profits
(but infeasible)
0.9
Workers best
response function
0.7
0.6
0.45
Reservation
wage
10
13
20
Hourly wage, $
25
26
above we defined the best response function as showing how the worker will
respond to each of the firms possible wages taking into account:
1. How important to the employee are the things that can be bought with the wage?
2. How unpleasant is it to work at each level of effort?
3. The probability of getting fired when working at each effort level.
4. The consequences of getting fired.
If there are changes in any of these, the best response function will either shift to the
right (it takes a higher wage to motivate the worker to work the same amount) or to
the left. Shifts to the left are obviously good for the owners of the firm, because they
can then get the same amount of effort for a lower wage. Whether the best response
function shifts right or left in response to a change in one of the items in the above
list depends on whether the change decreases the employment rent that the worker
would get at each wage (shifts right) or increases the rent (shifts left). Remember, the
employment rent is a measure of the cost of losing the job.
From Figure 4 we already know that a rise in the expected duration of unemployment
increases the employment rent and hence will will shift the workers best response
function to the left, because the consequences of losing a job become worse. When
the cost of a spell of unemployment rises the worker will be willing to put in more
effort for a given wage. Figure 8 shows how the best response function shifts left, if
jobs become harder to findmeaning that, after losing a job, workers expect to be
unemployed for longer.
Figure 4 also shows that an increase in the level of unemployment benefit decreases
the employment rent (job loss is not as costly). A rise in unemployment benefit will
shift the workers best response function to the right.
If we choose a given hourly wage, say $18, we can see that workers put in different
levels of effort when there are changes in the level of unemployment and the
unemployment benefit. Or if we choose a level of effort, say 0.6, and ask how much
wage the firm would have to pay to get the worker to provide that amount of work, we
see that it has to pay less if unemployment increases, and more if the unemployment
benefit increases.
27
0.85
0.75
28
0.6
0
Reservation
wage with more
unemployment
18
Reservation wage
with higher
unemployment benefit
Status quo
reservation
wage
Hourly wage, $
Figure 8. The best response function depends on the level of unemployment and the
unemployment benefit.
the best response function can also shift due to changes in firm policy about
things other than wages (as shown in Figure 9). We saw when discussing Figure 4
that if the managers improve working conditions by providing some amenity that
the worker values the job will be more valuable to the worker, who will work harder
for any given wage. The example we gave was air conditioning, but the amenity
could also be flexible work hours or free drinks after work on Fridays. The improved
amenities increase the employment rent and so shift the best response function to
the left. The firm now needs to pay less for a given amount of effort.
29
30
0
Reservation
wage with
worker
reciprocation
Status quo
reservation
wage
Reservation
wage when
working conditions
are worse
Hourly wage, $
Figure 9. The best response function depends on fairness and working conditions.
The disutility of effort may also be affected by an employees feelings about the
company, or its owners and managers. We know that from the Ultimatum Game in
Unit 4 that people care about being treated fairly. If other similar firms have recently
raised their wages and the employees firm has not, it is likely that workers will
regard their wages as unfair. This, in turn, will increase the disutility of working for
the company, resulting in a shift to the right in the best response function. At any
given wage, the employee will work less hard.
0.9
0.85
0.6
D
C
Slope of isoprofit
line = effort per
wage unit
Isoprofit line
(union wage only)
0
Reservation Reservation
wage with union wage when
voice effect
no union
Employers profit
maximising wage
(no union)
Union
wage
Hourly wage, $
31
32
a minority of firms have an entirely different structure to the one we have been
analysing: their workers, to whom the managers are responsible, own the firm. One
well-known example is the large British retailer John Lewis, founded in 1864 and
held in trust for its employees since 1950. Every employee is a partner, and employee
councils elect five out of seven members of the company board. The benefits for
employeespension, paid holidays, long-service sabbaticals, social activities
are generous; and the businesss profits are shared out as a bonus, calculated as a
percentage of each persons salary every year. The bonus normally ranges between
10% and 20% of pay even after a significant chunk of the profits are retained for
future investment. John Lewis is one of the countrys most profitable and consistently
successful retail businesses.
Worker-owned firms are hierarchically organised, like conventional firms, but the
directives issued from the top of the hierarchy come from people who owe their jobs
to the worker owners. Other than this, the main differences between conventional
firms and worker owned firms are that the cooperative firms, as they are sometimes
called, need fewer supervisors and other management personnel to ensure that the
worker owners work hard and well. Fellow worker owners will not tolerate a shirking
PAST ECONOMISTS
33
34
we can now broaden the perspective from a single firm to the economy as a
whole. As we have seen, the fear of job loss is a powerful motivation for workers.
The firms owners and managers make use of this to incentivise workers to work
hard. To extend this result to the economy as a whole, we ask how changes in
the unemployment rate affect the wage set by firms: because although there is a
disutility of exerting effort at work, the cost of job loss is considerably higher. Unit
12 examines the way economists have estimated the psychological, as well as the
financial, costs of unemployment.
In Figure 11 the employment rate in the economy is on the horizontal axis. You will
see that it goes up to a value of 1. The employment rate is defined as the proportion
of people of working age, usually defined as those between 16 and 64, who are
employed. There is a vertical line at a value of the employment rate less than one.
This is labelled labour force. Between the labour force line and the employment rate of
one is the proportion of people of working age who are neither working nor actively
looking for work; they are referred to as inactive, or out of the labour force.
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Wages
Labour
force
Wage curve
0
0.5
5%
Employment rate
12%
Unemployment
Figure 11. The wage curve: labour discipline and unemployment in the economy as a whole.
The upward-sloping line is called the wage curve. The wage curve translates the
firm-level labour discipline model into a way of viewing an important relationship
between wages and unemployment in the economy as a whole. The way to do this
is to first take a high unemployment rate, such as 12%. The unemployment rate is
the proportion of the labour force who are not employed. At 12% unemployment
the workers cost of job loss is high, because it will be harder to find another job,
and so unemployment is likely to last for longer. As a result, the worker will put in
a high level of effort for a relatively low wage. The firms profit-maximising wage is
therefore low. We can also relate this back to Figure 8, where we showed that a higher
unemployment rate shifts the workers best response function to the left. As a result,
the firm sets a lower wage. This is shown in Figure 11 by the lower wage at the high
unemployment rate.
At 5% unemployment the workers cost of job loss is low and the worker will put in
a low level of effort for a low wage. The firms profit-maximising wage is therefore
higher. This is shown in Figure 11 by a higher wage at the low unemployment level.
The effect of unemployment on effort levels leads firms to raise the wage as the
unemployment rate falls, and is the reason for the wage curve sloping upward.
As we see in Unit 14, we can also translate the other influences on the effort-wage
trade-off, such as the level of the unemployment benefit and the institutional
structure of union wage bargaining, into the wage-curve diagram. These aspects of
economic policy and institutions will shift the wage curve. For example, a higher
unemployment benefit reduces the cost of job loss and shifts the wage curve upward.
When unions use their bargaining power in wage negotiations, a higher wage is set
for a given unemployment rate. In Unit 14 we also show how to use the wage curve
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6.14 CONCLUSION
the wage curve, and the empirical studies of the effects of recessions on wage
cutting and worker effort, indicate that the firm as an actor affects the entire
economy. To understand the firms role in the economy, we view the firm not only
as an actor, but also a stage on which the actors that make up each firmowners,
managers, and employeesinteract.
The three sets of actors come together in the firm because they expect to be better off
participating in the firm than they would be otherwise. And they are better off. We
have already seen that workers earn economic rents, so they are doing better than
they would without the job. The same is true of managers. Owners of the firm are of
course making sufficient profits to continue to invest in this firm, instead of moving
their funds elsewhere.
But wherever there are mutual gains to be had, there will be conflicts over the
distribution of these gains. There are conflicts of interests between the owners
(greater profits) with those of the managers (greater salaries, first class air travel)
and the interests of the employees (higher wages, a safe work environment or a less
punishing pace of work).
In Unit 3 we saw that, for an individual farmer or student deciding on how hard to
work, conflicts can arise between the individuals objectives that require them to
trade free time for more goods or more grades. We asked if the farmer or student is
doing the best possible under these constraints? If the answer was no, then only the
individual suffered.
But in Units 4 and 5, and also in this unit, conflicts arise between people. These
conflicts are unavoidable because what each person receives depends on what
another person does, and gets. In the Public Good game in Unit 4, for example,
payoffs depend not only on how much you contribute to the public good, but also
how much others contributed. If in this case others are selfish, and do not contribute,
then you have a conflict of interest with them. Similarly Bart and Angela had a
conflict of interest because Bart could keep some of what Angela produced: there was
a conflict about how much she would produce, and how much Bart would get as a
result.
In the firm, what the owners receive depends on what the managers and employees
do, and the same is true of what the managers and employees receive. Managers
determine what will be done with other peoples money, and with other peoples
effort.
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38
1. When people specialise in different tasks in producing a given commodity, and also in
the production of different commodities, this is called the division of labour.
2. There are two main ways that the products of peoples specialised labour get
transferred from the producer to others (whether consumers or other producers):
markets and firms.
3. The distribution of mutual gains of the three sets of actors in the firm will depend on
the balance of bargaining power among them.
4. Whenever there are economies of scale, the cost savings from greater firm size can
arise from engineering benefits, greater ability to specialise and the presence of
fixed costs. Diseconomies of scale can limit firm size when firms get too large and it
becomes costly to coordinate, or they cannot respond qiuckly to changes.
5. The contract between the employee and the firm is incomplete. It specifies a wage
and other conditions, but it does not specify exactly what the worker is to do from day
to day or how hard she is to work. As a result, the firm cannot purchase the employees
work activities in the same way that it purchases other inputs like electricity or raw
materials.
6. The workers employment rate measures how much better off the worker is having the
job than she would be were she to lose her job and therefore receive her reservation
option. Employment rents exist because most firms do not try to pay the lowest
possible wage; instead they pay workers more than the minimum in order to make
the cost of job loss high enough so that along with the workers other motiviations,
she will work hard. Because finding and training good new workers is costly, firms are
willing to offer workers a rent, both to recruit them and to keep them from leaving.
7. The wage rate chosen by the firm will depend on the bargaining power of workers
versus owners and managers, as well as the reservation option of the worker. It is
therefore affected by the extent of unemployment benefit in the economy, as well as
other factors, such as the presence of unions.
8. The wage curve represents the relationship between wages and unemployment in
the entire economy. The curve is upward-sloping, highlighting the fact that the firms
have to pay workers a higher wage to address the triple problems of motivation,
recruitment and retention when unemployment is low and the cost of job loss is small.
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