Works councils are the most important pillar of workplace industrial relations in Germany but little is known of their economic effects. The paper uses a modern, large-scale dataset to examine this issue. Consonant with recent applied theoretical conjectures, it is found that works councils are...

Low-wage employment has become an important feature of the labor market and a controversial topic for debate in many countries. How to interpret the prominence of lowpaid jobs and whether they are beneficial to workers or society is currently an open question. The answer depends on whether...