As they are employee associations, it is typically presumed that works councils redistribute economic rents from firm owners to workers. And indeed, empirical literature suggests that works councils reduce profits although, at the same time, they increase productivity. Studies on the...

Many recent studies exploring conditional factor demand or factor substitution issues use firm level panel data. A considerable number of establishment panels contains no direct information on the capital input, necessary for production or cost function estimation. Incorrect measurement of...

Corporate bankruptcy in Germany has been on a long-run decline. Even before the recent double crisis of the pandemic and multiple cost shocks, bankruptcy figures were one-third lower than around the turn of the century but were larger and affected more mature firms. With the onset of the double...

Using a large linked employer-employee data set for Germany, we investigate differences in the unexplained gender pay gap between owner-run and manager-run firms. We hypothesise that owner-run firms have higher pay gaps because active owners are less inhibited to live out profit-reducing...

This paper investigates the relationship between the use of temporary agency work and the user firm's productivity. We hypothesise that modest use enhances numerical flexibility and thus productivity, while excessive use mirrors lowproductivity strategies utilising less social and human capital...