Abstract

Profit-maximizing firms have strong incentives to retain their most-talented employees that make meaningful contributions to profit through high productivity and/or ingenuity. This study attempts to find a method firms can use to accomplish this by examining the relationship between broad-based stock option and other employee-ownership plans and the rate of voluntary employee turnover. We use industry level data on ten large industries from three post-industrial countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand) to empirically examine this relationship. A polynomial specification will be used to align with the theoretical nature of the relationship, but it will be compared with a standard linear model as a robustness check. We applied regression models with and without employer benefit spending variable, however, we do not find statistically significant evidence for the relationship in any model, suggesting the need for additional study and data information.

Advisor

Tian, Huiting

Department

Business Economics

Disciplines

Behavioral Economics | Benefits and Compensation | Business Administration, Management, and Operations | Econometrics | Economic Theory | Labor Economics | Training and Development

Keywords

broad-based, stock options, employee ownership, employee incentives, labor market, game theory, employee utility, profit-maximization, loss aversion

Publication Date

2021

Degree Granted

Bachelor of Arts

Document Type

Senior Independent Study Thesis

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