Using matched employer-employee data from the German LIAB for 2001, the authors found that German works councils are in general associated with higher earnings, even after accounting for establishment- and worker heterogeneity. Works council wage premia exceed those of collective bargaining and...

Using the IAB Establishment Panel, which is representative for western Germany, the authors find that establishment-level wages reacted to variations in the regional unemployment rate. The elasticity of wages with respect to unemployment, they estimate, was about -0.1. This responsiveness of the...

This study investigates the content, status, and likely impact of the Social Charter, a declaration of social rights (primarily workers' rights) endorsed by the European Community in December 1989. The European Commission, which initiated the Charter, has justified the mandated benefits proposed...

Displaced workers with generous periods of advance notice are more likely than their non-notified counterparts to avoid post-displacement unemployment altogether, but once unemployed, they tend to escape from unemployment much more slowly. The authors, using data from the five-year retrospective...

The principal justification for minimum wage legislation has been the claim that it would improve the economic condition of low-wage workers. Most previous analyses of the distributional effects of minimum wages have been based on simulation exercises employing restrictive assumptions that...

Conventional analyses of the effect of unemployment insurance (UI) on unemployment duration have neglected the issue of sample construction. The authors show that such studies, by failing to account for job finding among those eligible for UI within intervals corresponding to the waiting time...

This paper examines how advance notice of layoff affects the incidence and duration of unemployment following displacement. The authors use the Displaced Worker Survey for 1988, which, unlike earlier surveys in the series, contains information on written notice. The results are mixed. Longer...

The authors investigate the employment consequences of minimum wage regulation in 16 OECD countries, 1970-2008. Their treatment is motivated by Neumark and Wascher's (2004) seminal cross-country study using panel methods to estimate minimum wage effects among teenagers and young adults. Apart...

Theory suggests that firms confront a hold-up problem in dealing with workplace unionism: unions will appropriate a portion of the quasi-rents stemming from long-lived capital. As a result, firms may be expected to limit their exposure to rent-seeking by reducing investments. The U.S. evidence...