Despite its lack of attractiveness to other countries, the German system of quasi-parity codetermination at company level has held up remarkably well. We recount the theoretical arguments for and against codetermination and survey the empirical evidence on the effects of the institution, tracing...

The Freeman-Lazear works council/worker involvement model is assessed over two distinct industrial relations regimes. In non-union British establishments our measures of employee involvement are associated with improved economic performance, whereas for unionized plants negative results are...

This paper assesses the recent progress and future direction of labor policy in the European Community, now the European Union. The authors show that most of the mandates foreshadowed under the December 1989 Community Social Charter have now been enacted into law. They analyze the possible...

The paper constructs an asymmetric information model to investigate the efficiency and equity cases for government mandated benefits. A mandate can improve workers' insurance, and may also redistribute in favour of more "deserving" workers. The risk is that it may also reduce output. The more...