German law guaranteeing works councils is not a datum. The thrust of legislation has changed significantly on a number of occasions since 1920. The most recent legal change in the form of the Works Constitution Reform Act marks a controversial swing in favor of works council formation and...

Due to labor market reforms in Germany some years ago, the incentives to work changed. The paper analyzes the effects on the reservation wages for specific groups. It is assumed that reservation wages are determined by the replacement rates implied by the system of unemployment benefits and by...

In recent years, a lot of rules concerning government expenditures as well as tax revenues were changed in Germany. Government expenditures in relation to GDP were reduced, income tax rates were lowered and the budget deficit declined. The structure of government expenditures changed in favor of...

Using OLS and quantile regression methods and rich cross-section data sets for western and eastern Germany, this paper demonstrates that the impact of works council presence on labor productivity varies between manufacturing and services, between plants that are or are not covered by collective...

In dieser Arbeit werden mögliche Auswirkungen des deutschen Schwerbehindertengesetzes auf die Arbeitsplatzdynamik anhand von Daten einer Vollerhebung davon betroffener Arbeitgeber durch die Bundesagentur für Arbeit und von Daten des IAB-Betriebspanels empirisch überprüft. Dabei wird aus...

Many plant-level studies find that average wages in exporting firms are higher than in non-exporting firms from the same industry and region. This paper uses a large set of linked employer-employee data from Germany to analyze this exporter wage premium. We show that the wage differential...

In Germany, many labour laws and regulations apply only in establishments above a critical size, and usually these thresholds are defined by the number of employees. The existing 160 thresholds are complex and defined inconsistently, making it difficult for firms to obey the law. Moreover,...

In public discussion in Germany it is often argued that jobs are mainly created in small and medium-sized firms (i.e. the Mittelstand"), whereas large firms tend to reduce their number of jobs. An empirical analysis for the period 1999 to 2005 with data of all western and eastern German firms...