This paper brings together two factors deemed important correlates of firm performance: advanced management practices and works councils. The country sample comprises nations where workplace representation is via a works council. The Management Questionnaire of the 2013 European Company Survey...

The empirical literature on central banking has found measures of central bank independence/conservatism to be negatively correlated with inflation and inflation variance across countries. But the cross-country approach has been criticised for its focus on policy outcomes instead of policies,...

In this paper, we examine the heterogeneous treatment effects of a universal child care (preschool) program in Germany by exploiting the exogenous variation in attendance caused by a reform that led to a large staggered expansion across municipalities. Drawing on novel administrative data from...

Since 1920, the thrust of German law on workplace codetermination has changed on a number of occasions. We describe the latest swing of the legislative pendium - favoring works council formation and competence - and evaluate the case for it. We provide new information on the extent of works...

We estimate the effects of works councils on productivity, 1997 - 2000, using the IAB Establishment Panel, a nationally representative German data set. We recoup the works council effect by estimating translog production functions, stochastic frontier production functions, and a model in first...

If migrants return to their origin countries, two questions arise which are of immediate economic interest for both immigration and emigration country: What determines their optimal migration duration, and what are the activities migrants choose after a return. Little research has been devoted...

Although works councils are a core element of the German system of industrial relations, there is little reliable information on their incidence and coverage. This paper uses data from the nationally representative IAB establishment panel to fill this gap. We examine the frequency of works...

The degree to which economic status is transmitted from one generation to the next is an important indicator for the inequality of opportunities. One crucial element of intergenerational mobility is the way parents influence the education of their children. Unlike in the UK or in the US, in...