Determinants of Asset Ownership: A Study of the Carpentry Trade
利用木工行业生产性资产所有权的数据，分析雇主与雇员之间资产分配的影响因素，发现所有权取决于资产是否易丢失或被盗（倾向于员工所有）以及雇主任务分配是否影响资产折旧（倾向于雇主所有）。
We use a data set describing ownership of productive assets in the carpentry trade to evaluate several factors influencing the allocation of asset ownership between an employer and his employees. The findings suggest that the allocation involves a tradeoff between two incentive effects influencing how the employee uses the asset and what the employer decides it should be used for. In particular, the allocation of ownership hinges on whether an asset is easily lost or stolen, which favors employee ownership, and whether the employer's task assignment affects the asset's depreciation, which favors employer ownership. There is also evidence that more expensive assets and assets that are shared by more than one employee are more likely to be owned by the employer. The results suggest that a general theory of asset ownership should be able to take account of at least these effects. © 2005 President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.