Sequential analyses of the major workplace data sets available to British researchers - the Workplace Industrial/Employee Relations Surveys (WIRS/WERS) - have revealed shifts in some previously solid relationships between union presence and a variety of establishment performance indicators. So...

This paper reviews the process of job creation and destruction across a sample of 16 industrial and emerging economies over the past decade. It exploits a harmonized firm-level data-set drawn from business registers and enterprise census data. The paper assesses the importance of technological...

This paper present paper provides the first results for Germany on the impact of works councils and collective agreements on plant closings, using data from the IAB establishment panel. We find evidence of a robust positive association between works council presence and plant closures. The...

Perhaps no other country in recent years has witnessed greater change in its collective bargaining framework than the UK. This paper describes the dramatic developments and their consequences. Like Gaul, it is in three parts. The first part charts the six major pieces of legislation -...

The labor economics literature has shown that the "efficient bargaining" model, in which wage and employment are negotiated simultaneously, is less frequently used on unionized markets than the less efficient "right-to-manage" model, in which wage is determined via bargaining and employment...

Unlike many other contracts, employment contracts are subject to various external administrative procedures governing separations, ranging from compulsory severance payments and advance notice periods (usually seniority based), to collective layoff procedures (usually depending on the firm’s...

This contribution investigates severance payments for dismissed employees in Germany. Subsequent to an overview about the legal framework, we respond to the following questions: Who receives severance payments? By which characteristics is the level of severance payments determined? Is...

Using a large linked employer-employee data set for Germany, we find that the existence of a works council is associated with a lower separation rate to employment, in particular for men and workers with low tenure. While works council monopoly effects show up in all specifications, clear voice...

This study examines differences in employment growth between firms with and without works councils by separating introduction effects from potential selectivity effects. Using a difference in differences framework, we show that firms with works councils have higher employment growth before...

This study examines the differences in the likelihood of overpayment and overemployment in establishments with and without works councils. In contrast to other studies, we use assessments by the management concerning the existence of such problems. Furthermore, we also analyze how different...