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...

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...

This note provides evidence for the relationship between income comparisons and subjective well-being (SWB), using novel German data on self-reported comparison intensity and perceived relative income for seven reference groups. We find negative correlations between comparison intensity and SWB...

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...

Information economics has emerged as the primary theoretical lens for framing financing decisions in firm R&D investment. Successful outcomes of R&D projects are either ex-ante impossible to predict or the information is asymmetrically distributed between inventors and investors. As a result,...

The aim of this paper is to analyse the effects of knowledge management on the innovation success of firms in Germany. Using a matching procedure on data from the German Innovation Survey of 2003 (Mannheim Innovation Panel), we pair firms applying knowledge management with twin firms with...

In this paper we investigate the factors that lead firms to cooperate with partners from foreign countries on innovation activities. Portuguese and German data from the harmonised Community Innovation Survey (CIS III) allow us to compare innovation cooperation behaviour of private firms in the...

The German law on co-determination at the plant level (Betriebsverfassungsgesetz) stipulates that works councilors are neither to be financially rewarded nor penalized for their activities. This regulation contrasts with publicized instances of excessive payments. The divergence has sparked a...