Based on a cohort of establishments from the IAB Establishment Panel which hired their first employee in 1995/96, this paper analyzes potential determinants of the survival and employment growth of these newly founded firms until the year 2003. There are few robust results that are statistically...

Since 1920, the thrust of German law on workplace codetermination has changed on a number of occasions. We describe the latest swing of the legislative pendulum - favoring works council formation and competence - and evaluate the case for it. We provide new information on the extent of works...

Using a large administrative dataset for Germany, this paper compares employment developments in exiting and surviving establishments. For both West and East Germany we find a clear "shadow of death" effect reflecting lingering illness: establishments shrink dramatically already several years...

Using a 50 percent sample of all establishments in the German private sector, we report that spinoffs are larger and initially employ more skilled and more experienced workers than other startups. Controlling for these and other differences, we find that spinoffs are less likely to exit than...