This book uses economic theory to argue that worker-controlled firms are rare due to market failures rather than inherent organizational defects. The book will be of interest to scholarly researchers, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates in economics, especially in industrial organization, labor economics, comparative economics, organizational economics, and finance.

This book uses economic theory to argue that labor-managed firms are rare due to market failures rather than any inherent organizational defects.

'This is a lovely book, and one we have needed for several decades. It offers a genuinely novel perspective on the theory of labor-managed firms, informed at every step by a careful attention to empirical findings and by the institutional makeup of real-world worker cooperatives and employee-owned firms. Dow has spent some thirty years thinking about these issues, and brings his work together in an impressive whole. It will redefine the theoretical and empirical research agendas, as well as providing an invaluable text in support of a postgraduate course on economic democracy.' Virginie Pérotin, University of Leeds