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...

The authors explore the effects of organizational change on employee well-being using multivariate analyses of linked employer-employee data for Britain, with particular emphasis on whether unions moderate these effects. Nationally representative data consist of 13,500 employees in 1,238...

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...

Using data from the 1984 Displaced Worker Survey, the authors model the determinants of time without work following job displacement for a large sample of workers laid off because of plant shutdowns between 1979 and 1984. The major focus of the paper is on the role of advance notification in...

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...