In 2013, mandatory worker representation on French corporate boards was enacted. We examine the way employee directors have been incorporated within the board machinery. Our empirical results indicate that employee representatives have a limited access to board committees. This result casts...

Does founding family control affect labor cost stickiness? Theoretically, labor cost stickiness is a double‐sided sword: While it can be interpreted as long‐term commitment to employees, it increases operating leverage, reduces operating performance, and thus jeopardizes long‐term firm...

This paper studies whether a decline in employment protection reduces workers' long‐term sickness absences (of 6 weeks). We exploit exogenous variation from a German policy change that shifted the threshold exempting small establishments from dismissal protection from 5 to 10 workers. Using...

In this article, we study whether performance evaluations can serve as an instrument for firms to increase employee retention. Feedback on one's own performance may affect individual turnover intentions differently depending on the relative wage rank of workers among their peers. In line with...

Works councils in many countries are involved in dismissal procedures and may therefore invoke high hold‐up costs for firms laying off workers. To avoid these conflicts, firms with a works council may have a stronger preference for more agreeable job applicants who have a low risk of...

Worker participation in decision‐making is often associated with high‐wage and high‐productivity firm strategies. Using linked employer–employee data for Germany and worker fixed effects from a two‐way fixed‐effects model of wages capturing observed and unobserved worker quality, we...

Using the cases of Ireland and Portugal during the post‐2008 Great Recession, we argue that unions' ideological formations around social concertation are central in aiding them to navigate their options about whether to engage in concessionary bargaining with government under crisis...

This paper shows that labor demand plays an important role in the labor market reactions to a pension reform in Germany. Employers with a high share of older worker inflow compared with their younger worker inflow, employers in sectors with few investments in research and development, and...