This paper uses data from a nationally representative panel of establishments to estimate the effects of German works councils on firm performance, 1997 - 2000. We analyze the impact of this institution on sales and sales growth using OLC and fixed effect estimates of a translog production...

Many plant-level studies find that average wages in exporting firms are higher than in non-exporting firms from the same industry and region. This paper uses a large set of linked employeremployee data from Germany to analyze this exporter wage premium. We show that the wage differential becomes...

Using unique recently released nationally representative high-quality longitudinal enterprise-level data for Germany, this paper presents the first comprehensive evidence on the relationship between exports and profitability. It documents that the positive profitability differential of exporters...

Using OLS and quantile regression methods and rich cross-section data sets for western and eastern Germany, this paper demonstrates that the impact of works council presence on labor productivity varies between manufacturing and services, between plants that are or are not covered by collective...

In a recent paper Edward Lazear proposed the "Jack-of-all-trades" view of entrepreneurship. Based on a coherent model of the choice between self-employment and paid employment he shows that having a background in a large number of different roles increases the probability of becoming an...

This paper uses a newly available comprehensive panel data set for manufacturing enterprises from 2001 to 2005 to document the first empirical results an the relationship between imports and productivity for Germany, a leading actor an the world market for goods. Furthermore, for the first time...