In previous work, Gregory K. Dow created a broad and accessible overview of worker-controlled firms. In his new book, The Labor-Managed Firm: Theoretical Foundations, Dow provides the formal models that underpinned his earlier work, while developing promising new directions for economic research. Emphasizing that capital is alienable while labor is inalienable, Dow shows how this distinction, together with market imperfections, explains the rarity of labor-managed firms. This book uses modern microeconomics, exploits up-to-date empirical research, and constructs a unified theory that accounts for many facts about the behavior, performance, and design of labor-managed firms. With a large number of entirely new chapters, comprehensive updating of earlier material, a critique of the literature, and policy recommendations, here Dow presents the capstone work of his career, encompassing more than three decades of theoretical research.

The economic theory of the labor-managed firm dates back 60 years. Here I review the intellectual history of this field, with critical remarks and proposals for future development. The decades of the 1960s-1980s saw a burst of theoretical speculation that generally did not hold up well under empirical scrutiny. By the 1990s, progress on the mainstream theory of the firm was overtaking some of this early research. At the same time, a growing body of econometric work on labor-managed firms was providing new stylized facts for theorists to explain. While the earlier period was characterized by an excess supply of theories relative to facts, more recently the balance has begun to tip in the opposite direction. I close by suggesting new theoretical directions that might shed light on the empirical asymmetries between capital-managed and labor-managed firms.

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This book illustrates and discusses the major points of the economic theory of producer cooperatives, its evolution since the 1950s and links with Marxian theory. Most importantly, this book demonstrates that a system of producer cooperatives offers a wealth of advantages compared to capitalism. There is general agreement that the main bene

One of the central dynamics shaping organizations is a contradiction managers face between ensuring workforce discipline and harnessing worker creativity. In this rich study of American manufacturing, Matt Vidal offers a theory of 'organizational political economy', integrating concepts from organization theory into a classical Marxist framework.