The paper considers profit shifting behavior using data on German inbound and outbound FDI. It finds an empirical correlation between the home country tax rate of a parent and the net of tax profitability of its German affiliate that is consistent with profit shifting behavior. For profitable...

In 2004, a section was added to the German Protection against Dismissal Act, establishing a new procedure to dismiss an employee, given a predetermined severance payment. Most legal scholars presume the change to be without impact, while a minority of experts claims it to be either beneficial or...

In Germany, there is no trade union membership wage premium, while the membership fee amounts to 1% of the gross wage. Therefore, prima facie, there are strong incentives to free-ride on the benefits of trade unionism. We establish empirical evidence for a private gain from trade union...

The paper argues that the weakest link principle, which has been widely used as a measure of ultimate owners? control rights, has a number of serious problems. A theoretically more satisfactory method of measuring control rights, based on voting power indices, is proposed, and the different...

Due to the complexity of employment protection legislation (EPL) in Germany, there is notable uncertainty about the outcomes of dismissal conflicts. In this study we focus on severance pay and inquire whether its incidence and level varies in a systematic manner with the legal rules as defined...

The paper considers profit shifting behavior using data on German inbound and outbound FDI. It finds an empirical correlation between the home country tax rate of a parent and the net of tax profitability of its German affiliate that is consistent with profit shifting behavior. For profitable...