Public sector employees are often said to have excessive rates of absence from work. Using representative survey data for Germany, we indeed find absenteeism of employees to be higher in the public than the private sector. The differences in the incidence and days of absence showing up in...

Die Sicherung und Verbesserung der Arbeitsqualität gehört zu den Zielen der EU und der Bundesregierung. Die politischen Bemühungen werfen die Frage auf, ob der Staat als Arbeitgeber im Hinblick auf die Arbeitsqualität mit gutem Beispiel vorangeht. Mithilfe von repräsentativen...

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel 1984-2017, this paper provides first evidence on the public-private sector wage gap in Germany based on a fixed effect quantile approach. The results reveal substantial differences in the decomposition of the gap compared to the standard...

Changes in the employment sector over the course of a career, i.e., employees switching from the private to the public sector or vice versa, are a common phenomenon. These sector switches have hardly been studied so far. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel I give insights into sector...

Trade unions and employers' associations play an important role in Germany not only in wage setting, but also in social policy and labour market regulation. While the majority of companies are organised in employers' associations, less than one fifth of employees are still members of a trade...

Using representative data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), this paper finds a statistically significant union wage premium in Germany of almost three percent which is not simply a collective bargaining premium. Given that the union membership fee is typically about one percent of...

This paper examines supervisors' considerations about (not) using monitoring technologies to keep track of subordinates and their work performance. We conduct a factorial survey experiment. The hypothetical descriptions of workplace situations - so-called vignettes - create a situation where the...

We shed light on an understudied group: retirees in unions. Using representative individual-level data of 19 European countries, we find that the share of retirees in unions and the union density of retirees increased between 2008 and 2020. Econometric analyses indicate that on average retired...

Using a large data set for Germany, we show that both the raw and the unexplained gender earnings gap are higher in self-employment than in paid employment. Applying an Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, more than a quarter of the difference in monthly self-employment earnings can be traced back to...

Using comprehensive data for West Germany, this paper investigates the determinants of establishment exit. We find that between 1975 and 2006 the average exit rate has risen considerably. In order to test various 'liabilities' of establishment survival identified in the literature, we analyze...