Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/175904 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2009
Series/Report no.: 
Working Papers in Economics No. 09/03
Publisher: 
Izmir University of Economics, Department of Economics, Izmir
Abstract: 
Law firms are expected to be controlled by the workers because given the diffculty of monitoring labor, the transaction cost would be very high and the essential human capital investment would be lacking in a firm controlled by the capital suppliers. Expectations are confirmed by the data. However, following the same reasoning one can easily suggest that software firms should also be controlled by the labor suppliers given the similar diffculty of monitoring labor and essential human capital. As in a law firm, the software firm uses very generic capital such as offices, computers and programming languages. Moreover, the human capital of the software developer is indispensable and highly firm specific. While we observe widespread worker control in terms of partnerships in legal service industry, the majority of the software firms are not controlled by the labor suppliers: instead they are controlled by the capital suppliers.
Subjects: 
Organizational forms
Asset specificity
JEL: 
D21
D23
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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