Employee-owned firms with majority workforce control-such as worker cooperatives-remain rare in market economies, despite evidence that they perform at least as well as investor-owned firms across various contexts. Why does capital typically hire labor, rather than the other way around? We offer a novel answer to this longstanding question by highlighting the role of beliefs and misperceptions as drivers of demand for employee ownership. To investigate this, we conducted a preregistered experiment with a representative sample of 2,000 Italians aged 18-30, examining how beliefs influence both policy preferences and career intentions related to worker cooperatives. Participants were randomly assigned to receive information drawn from an international expert survey. We find that respondents hold more pessimistic beliefs about cooperatives than the expert assessments. Exposure to expert information leads to more optimistic beliefs and increases support for pro-cooperative policies. While intentions to join cooperatives do not change significantly in absolute terms, we find suggestive evidence of a relative shift in career preferences toward worker cooperatives compared to conventional private-sector firms and self-employment.

With G. Burdin. SSRN Working Paper.