We analyse the interaction between different labour market institutions in Germany, a country with a long tradition of strong bargaining partners. A number of studies have established that industry-level bargaining exerts a moderating role on firm-level co-determination: works councils generate...

Unions and collective bargaining play a central role in shaping wages and influencing firms' employment decisions and firm survival, especially in industrialised countries, and where they are traditionally strong. Their impact depends on the institutional role unions (can) play in different...

A large number of articles have analysed 'the one constant' in the economic effects of trade unions, namely that collective bargaining reduces employment growth by two to four percentage points per year. Evidence is, however, mostly related to Anglo-Saxon countries. We investigate whether a...

Based on the article by Hübler and Jirjahn (2003), I analyse the interaction effects of works councils and collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) on productivity and wages in German plants. In contrast to previous literature, newer developments in the system of industrial relations could...

This paper analyses the impact of opening clauses in German collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) on job flows. Opening clauses should provide firms with more flexibility in economic crises. Therefore, firms operating under a CBA with opening clauses are expected to have lower job turnover, in...

This paper indicates that the extent of collective bargaining coverage in an industry may depend on the differences in firms productivity levels within the industry. Less pronounced differences in productivity levels make it easier to design collective wage contracts that are accepted by a wider...

Collective bargaining agreements have been said to decrease deployment since the work of Calmfors and Driffill (1988). We investigate empirically whether opening clauses, flexible elements that have been introduced to reduce the decline in coverage, can indeed minimise this effect and increase...