We investigate the effects of works councils on employees' wages and job satisfaction in general and for subgroups with respect to sex and occupational status. Making use of a German representative sample of employees, we find that employees, who move to a firm with a works council, report...

Based on a German representative sample of employees we explore the relevance and development of further training in private sector firms. We focus on formal training and explore possible individual and job-based determinants of its incidence. We also show changes over time during a 20 year...

Using data on executive compensation for the German chemical industry, we investigate the relevance of two theoretical approaches that focus on bonuses as part of a long term wage policy of a firm. The first approach argues that explicit bonuses serve as substitutes for implicit career concerns....

Many previous studies try to discover job preferences by directly asking individuals. Since it is not sure, whether answers to these surveys are relevant for actual behaviour, this empirical examination offers a new approach based on representative German data. Employees who quit their job and...

There are strong two-way links between parent and child happiness (life satisfaction), even for 'children' who have grown up, moved to their own home and partnered themselves. German panel evidence shows that transmission of (un)happiness from parents to children is partly due to transmission of...

This paper examines the question of whether risk aversion of prime-age workers is negatively correlated with human height to a statistically significant degree. A variety of estimation methods, tests and specifications yield robust results that permit one to answer this question in the...

We examine the relationship between works councils and two different types of employment separation: dismissals by the firm and voluntary quits by employees. Based on representative data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we find a negative relationship between works councils and both kinds...

To improve their competitiveness the companies aim to increase the funds available to finance the necessary investments. In order to reduce wage costs company-specific deviations from industry-level wage contracts are concluded. Company-level pacts between the management and the works council...

This paper demonstrates how quality of life can be measured by plain text in a representative survey, the German Socio Economic Panel Study (SOEP). Furthermore, the paper shows that problems that are difficult to monitor, especially problems like the state of the European Union, long-term...

Using a unique dataset we study both the actual and self-perceived relationship between subjective well-being and income comparisons against a wide range of potential comparison groups, enabling us to investigate a broader range of questions than in previous studies. In questions inserted into a...