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 is the first to show theoretically and empirically how firms' production technology affects the choice of their preferred wage formation regime. Our theoretical framework predicts, first, that the larger the total factor productivity of a firm, the more likely it is to opt for...

This paper employs a wage-setting approach to analyze the labor market effects of immigration into Germany. The wage-setting framework relies on the assumption that wages tend to decline with the unemployment rate, albeit imperfectly. This enables us to consider labor market rigidities, which...

This paper analyses how and to which degree the Danish flexicurity concept and its various elements achieve the renowned Danish miracle by evaluating their unemployment and inequality effects and their complementarities. We develop a microfounded model of searching workers and firms, calibrate...

Using a newly constructed macroeconometric model for Germany and the rest of the Euro area, we investigate the macroeconomic effects of structural labor market reforms in Germany. We find that neither the fact that Germany can no longer pursue an independent monetary policy nor the possibility...

Germany remains Europe's largest and most diversified source of new technology, but still lags in the fastest growing areas of today's high technology. After World War II, West-German technology policy sought to rebuild the institutions which had supported Germany's leadership in the high-tech...

This paper presents a positive model which shows that institutional setups on capital and labor markets might be intertwined by politicoeconomic forces. Two politicoeconomic equilibria arise from our model, one with little protection of insiders on capital and labor markets, and another one with...