Declining union density in many industrialized countries directs attention to alternative ways of labor relations and worker representation as, e.g., works councils. German works councils belong to the most powerful worker representations in developed countries but little is known of their...

Using German establishment data, this study provides the first econometric analysis on the interaction of establishment-level codetermination and foreign owners. Works councils are associated with higher productivity in domestic-owned establishments while they are associated with lower...

As they are employee associations, it is typically presumed that works councils redistribute economic rents from firm owners to workers. And indeed, empirical literature suggests that works councils reduce profits although, at the same time, they increase productivity. Studies on the...

We estimate dynamic effects of works councils on labor productivity using newly available information from West German establishment panel data. Conditioning on plant fixed effects and control variables, we find negative productivity effects during the first five years after council...

Worker participation in decision-making is often associated with high-wage and high-productivity firm strategies. Using linked-employer-employee data for Germany and worker fixed effects from a two-way fixed effects model of wages capturing observed and unobserved worker quality, we find that...