Agency costs are a cost of production, and firms that do a better job of minimizing these costs should exhibit better performance. This paper tests this hypothesis by calculating the performance elasticity of average employee hourly compensation for U.S. manufacturing firms. This elasticity indicates the degree of alignment between employee and shareholder objectives. The estimated elasticity is indistinguishable from zero in low performance firms, and it equals 0.193 in high performance firms. While it is difficult to know whether an elevated performance sensitivity causes better firm performance, clearly the best performers in manufacturing industries link average employee pay to performance.
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Paper provided by EconWPA in its series Labor and Demography with number
9607001.
Length: 37 pages Date of creation: 10 Jul 1996 Date of revision:
15 Apr 1998 Handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwpla:9607001
Note: Type of Document - MS-Word 7.0 for Windows 95; prepared on IBM PC - Windows 95; pages: 37 ; figures: included. Send me e-mail if there are any problems. I can attatch a copy of the file to my response, or I can arrange another form of delivery. Contact details of provider: Web page: http://129.3.20.41
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Find related papers by JEL classification: J33 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Compensation Packages; Payment Methods L14 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Transactional Relationships; Contracts and Reputation G3 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance
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