We conduct a comprehensive analysis of health determinants at the individual and workplace levels. Using a new individual-level German data set, we investigate the influence of these determinants on health, including collegiality, personality traits as measured by the Big Five, commitment to the...

This paper present paper provides the first results for Germany on the impact of works councils and collective agreements on plant closings, using data from the IAB establishment panel. We find evidence of a robust positive association between works council presence and plant closures. The...

German law guaranteeing works councils is not a datum. The thrust of legislation has changed significantly on a number of occasions since 1920. The most recent legal change in the form of the Works Constitution Reform Act marks a controversial swing in favor of works council formation and...

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 investigates trends in collective bargaining and worker representation in Germany from 2000 to 2008. It seeks to update and widen earlier analyses pointing to a decline in collective bargaining, while providing more information on the dual system as a whole. Using data from the IAB...

Although works councils are a core element of the German system of industrial relations, there is little reliable information on their incidence and coverage. This paper uses data from the nationally representative IAB establishment panel to fill this gap. We examine the frequency of works...

The effect of collective bargaining on innovation has long been in dispute. At the level of theory, the hold-up problem has been used to justify positive as well as negative effects of unionism. At the empirical level, although some would consider the North American evidence as cut and dried,...

Using linked employer-employee data, this paper estimates the effect of collective bargaining coverage on wages over an interval of continuing decline in unionism. Unobserved firm and worker heterogeneity is dealt with using two establishment sub-samples, comprising collective bargaining joiners...