Works councils are the most important pillar of workplace industrial relations in Germany but little is known of their economic effects. The paper uses a modern, large-scale dataset to examine this issue. Consonant with recent applied theoretical conjectures, it is found that works councils are...

This paper assesses the decline in collective bargaining coverage in Germany. Using repeat cross-section and longitudinal data from the IAB Establishment Panel, it indicates the overwhelming importance of behavioral as opposed to compositional change in this process. Further, in the first use of...

Despite its seeming lack of attractiveness to other countries, the German system of quasi-parity codetermination at company level has thus far held up fairly well. We recount the theoretical arguments for and against this form of codetermination, and survey the evolving empirical evidence as to...