Progressive Policy Analyst Releases Report on ESOPs
Executive Director
Jared Bernstein, the former chief economic advisor to Joe Biden and an influential thinker among left-leaning policy makers, released a report on January 26 titled Employee Ownership, ESOPs, Wealth, and Wages, in which he concludes that, were ESOPs to proliferate,
their impact on inequality reduction could well be significant. In part, I argue that this is a result of transferring wealth in the form of stock in their companies to workers who, because they own little such wealth, reside in the lower reaches of the wealth distribution. But the result also flows from research, which I both cite and contribute to herein, showing workers do not appear to trade off one form of income, like wages, for ownership shares (p. 1).
The report was commissioned by Employee-Owned S Corporations of America (ESCA).
Bernstein is quoted in an article in Politico saying, "I strongly suspect there's an untapped [interest] out there, as in more employers who would introduce ESOPs or other forms of [employee ownership] if they could figure out how to do it."