Conventional pension systems suffer from a design defect, which makes them financially unsustainable, and a source of inefficiency for the economy as a whole. The article outlines a second-best policy which includes a public pension system made up of two parallel schemes, a Bismarckian one...

This study investigates whether working time accounts affect the performance of German establishments based on the Establishment Panel from the Institute for Employment Research. The major results are: productivity and investments are positively correlated with working time accounts. No...

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.

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...