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...

This paper uses data from a nationally representative panel of establishments to estimate the effects of German works councils on firm performance, 1997-2000. We analyze the impact of this institution on sales and sales growth using OLS and fixed effect estimates of a translog production...

ABSTRACT: While it is a stylized fact that exporting firms pay higher wages than non-exporting firms, the direction of the link between exporting and wages is less clear. Using a rich set of German linked employer-employee panel data we follow over time plants that start to export. We show that...

"This paper makes an empirical investigation of the effects of the German Disabled Persons Act on employment dynamics using data from the Federal Employment Agency and the IAB Establishment Panel. The data permit an investigation of the second threshold of this law, which in the observation...

"According to the German Works Constitution Act, establishments whose workforces exceed certain thresholds have to release a certain number of members of their works councils from their regular work and enable them to work full time as works councillors. Using a full sample of all establishments...

This empirical study investigates the effect of the German disability law on employment dynamics, using data on all employers affected from the Federal Labour Office and data from the IAB Establishment Panel. The data allow us to analyze the second threshold of this law which stated (in our...

Using data from the social survey ALLBUS for West Germany in the period 1980 to 2006, this paper demonstrates that union members are on average older than non-unionized employees. The probability of being unionized shows the inverted U-shaped pattern in age conjectured by Blanchflower (BJIR...

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...

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...