Resumen de Employee share ownership and profit-sharing in the European Union: incidence, company characteristics, and union representation

Andrew Pendleton, Erik Poutsma, Chris Brewster, Jos van Ommeren

• This article examines the incidence of financial participation across the European Union at the end of the 1990s. The main findings are that the incidence of both profit-sharing and share ownership differ considerably across member states and that this correlates broadly with the extent of differences in legislative and fiscal support for them. Other factors, such as domestic ownership, stock market listing, size (in the case of share ownership) and workforce composition, are also important. On the whole clear or strong relationships between union density and financial participation were not identified.