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 uses a large plant level panel data set from Germany and a matching approach to look for casual effects of starting to export on plant performance. We find positive effects on growth of employment, labor productivity, and wages.