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...

Conventional pension systems suffer from a design defect which makes them financially unsustainable, and a source of inefficiency for the economy as a whole. The paper outlines a second-best policy which includes a public pension system made up of two parallel schemes, a Bismarckian one allowing...

We study the mechanisms that are associated with the gender education gap and its reversal in Germany. We focus on three outcomes, graduation from upper secondary school, any tertiary education, and tertiary degree. Neither individual and family background nor labor market characteristics appear...

Estimating saving and fertility simultaneously by the VAR method, we find that social security cover has a positive effect on household saving, and a negative effect on fertility. In Germany, as in other countries where the hypothesis was tested, social security is thus good for growth. A...

We exploit the 1996 reform of the German child benefit program to identify the causal effect of heterogeneous child benefits on fertility. While generally the reform increased child benefits, the exact amount of the increase varied by household income and the number of children. We use these...

Using a multi-dimensional measure of occupational mismatch, we report distinct gender differences in match quality and changes in match quality over the course of careers. A substantial portion of the gender wage gap stems from match quality differences among more educated individuals....

We study the intergenerational transmission of welfare benefit receipt in Germany. We first describe the correlation between welfare receipt experienced in the parental household and subsequent own welfare receipt of young adults. In a second step, we investigate whether the observed...