Using a unique dataset of German members of parliament with information on total earnings including outside income, this paper analyzes the politicians' wage gap (PWG). After controlling for observable characteristics as well as accounting for selection into politics, we find a positive PWG...

Since there is scant evidence on the role of industrial relations in wage cyclicality, this paper analyzes the effect of collective wage contracts and of works councils on real wage growth. Using linked employer-employee data for western Germany, we find that works councils affect wage growth...

This paper depicts and examines the decline in collective bargaining coverage in Germany. Using repeat cross-section and longitudinal data from the IAB Establishment Panel, we show the overwhelming importance of behavioral as opposed to compositional change and, for the first time, document...

In this paper, we investigate the effects of works councils on apprenticeship training in Germany. The German law attributes works councils substantial information and co-determination rights to training-related issues. Thus, works councils may also have an impact on the cost-benefit relation of...

Industrial relations are in flux in many nations, perhaps most notably in Germany and the Britain. That said, comparatively little is known in any detail of the changing pattern of the institutions of collective bargaining and worker representation in Germany and still less in both countries...

This paper traces the profound decline in German unionism over the course of the last three decades. Today just one in five workers is a union member, and it is now moot whether this degree of penetration is consistent with a corporatist model built on encompassing unions. The decline in union...

Recent studies have pointed to the association between declining collective bargaining coverage and rising overall wage inequality. This association holds more or less across-the-board, at least for broad swathes of recent history. That said, the exact contribution of deununionization is a...

This paper investigates the influence of industrial relations on firm wage premia in Germany. OLS regressions for the firm effects from a two-way fixed effects decomposition of workers' wages by Card, Heining, and Kline (2013) document that average premia are larger in firms bound by collective...

This paper presents the first comparative analysis of the decline in collective bargaining in two European countries where that decline has been most pronounced. Using workplace-level data and a common model, we present decompositions of changes in collective bargaining and worker representation...

This study provides updated evidence on the union contract differential in Germany using establishment-wide wage data and two estimation strategies. It provides pairwise estimates of the union differential based on separate samples of collective bargaining leavers and joiners vis-à-vis the...