抄録
Employee benefits have grown in importance over the past several decades. A lot of past research has explored the issues related to effects of employee benefits. While most typically viewed benefits as hygiene factors and unrelated to productivity and unable to help firms gain competitive advantage, there was a consensus that benefits are valuable in attracting and retaining competent employees. This claim implies that benefits may have a moderating effect on the relationship between labor input and output. Given the limited statistical evidence, this paper sets out to examine the issue. Analytical models based on production function are developed, and several important control variables are considered. Based on two large samples from Taiwan's shipping industry, empirical examinations reveal that employee benefits have a moderating effect on firm productivity, irrespective of industry or firm size. Furthermore, the effect size is greater in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) than that in large firms.
