Trade unions distort a profit-maximising firm's input choice. The nature of the resulting inefficiency depends on whether there are wage negotiations or there is efficient bargaining. Moreover, trade unions redistribute income and thereby affect welfare. If firms also pursue Corporate Social...

Employment protection legislation may affect the degree of substitutability among different types of labour contracts by changing the individuals sorting into jobs and firms screening in and out jobs. Using administrative data, we document this substitutability in the context of a labour market...

If individuals join a trade union their utility should increase. Therefore, union members can be expected to exhibit higher job satisfaction than comparable non-members. This expectation is not consistent with empirical findings. The evidence sometimes indicates that union members have lower job...

A large number of articles have analysed 'the one constant' in the economic effects of trade unions, namely that union bargaining reduces employment growth by two to four percentage points per year. Evidence is, however, mostly related to Anglo-Saxon countries. We investigate whether a different...

Economists often interpret absenteeism as an indicator of effort. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) study, this paper offers a comprehensive discussion of this view by analysing various forms of job mobility. The evidence reveals a significantly negative (positive) link...

This empirical study investigates if people's concerns about the euro currency affect their life satisfaction. A minority of very concerned individuals appear to be unhappy, which cannot be explained by personality or other observable factors typically affecting well-being. As a novelty, this...

For representative German panel data, we document that voluntary job switching is associated with higher levels of life satisfaction, though only for some time, whereas forced job changes do not affect life satisfaction clearly. Using plant closures as an exogenous trigger of switching to a new...

During the European sovereign debt crisis, most countries that ran into fiscal trouble had Catholic majorities, whereas countries with Protestant majorities were able to avoid fiscal problems. Survey data show that, within Germany, views on the euro differ between Protestants and...

What are the effects of firm- and sector-level trade unions on unemployment and aggregate output if individuals have rent-sharing motives? To answer this question, we extend a Melitz-type model to unionized labor markets. Because individual rent-sharing motives are only taken into account and...

Recent research has shown that the presence of peers can increase individual output both in the lab and the field. This paper tests for negative side effects of peer settings. We investigate whether peer settings are particularly prone to cheating even if they do not provide additional monetary...