The relation of several incentive schemes to productivity is studied, with a particular emphasis on the effects and determinants of dismissals. Dismissals turn out to be positively, but in a nonlinear way, associated with productivity. Similarly, profit-sharing raises productivity. Wages and piece-rates are insignificant. Profit-sharing decreases the number of dismissals made by firms.

We analyze the change in firms’ innovation behavior (short-term adjustment and long-term strategy) in reaction to the credit supply shock to banks in the recent financial crisis 2008/2009. Using a matched bank-firm data set for Germany, we utilize the exogenous variation caused by the interbank market disruptions on credit supply in instrumental variable estimations. Concerning the short-term innovation adjustment in 2009, our results show that (i) current innovation activities, (ii) the initiation of additional innovation and (iii) the reallocation of unused labor resources to the innovation department are affected by the shock to bank financing. We find that the effect is more pronounced for product innovation than for process innovation. Investigating the impact on the long-term innovation strategy in reaction to the crisis, we find that (iv) the sensitivity to adopting any innovation-related strategy to cope with the crisis could not be attributed to the negative bank credit supply shock.

Firm-specific assets generate an ex post bargaining problem over surplus-division, and rational workers may collude to obtain a surplus-share in nonpecuniary form through restriction of effort. Conversely, profit sharing should motivate cooperation to increase productivity when work organization facilitates interaction and horizontal monitoring, since productive effort yields positive externalities to workers under contractual surplus sharing. In simultaneous Tobit estimates we find a strong influence of profit sharing on factor productivity in a sample of medium-sized metalworking capitalist firms in West Germany. Proxies for human capital and organizational factors were included.