Using both household and linked-employer-employee data we study the effects of works councils on individual sickness absence rates and a subjective measure of personnel problems due to absenteeism in Germany. We find that the existence of a works council is positively correlated with the...

This study addresses the relationship between product innovation and the demand and supply of trade credit. Theoretical as well as empirical studies are used to derive the hypothesis of a positive link between product innovation and trade credit demand and supply. Using a sample covering SMEs...

Since there is scant evidence on the role of industrial relations in wage cyclicality, this paper analyzes the effect of collective wage contracts and of works councils on real wage growth. Using linked employer-employee data for western Germany, we find that works councils affect wage growth...

We analyze the effects of wage floors on optimal job design in a moral-hazard model with asymmetric tasks and imperfect aggregate performance measurement. Due to cost advantages of specialization, assigning the tasks to different agents is efficient. A sufficiently high wage floor, however,...

We analyze the effects of lower bounds on wages, e.g., minimum wages or liability limits, on job design within firms. In our model, two tasks contribute to non-verifiable firm value and affect an imperfect performance measure. The tasks can be assigned to either one or two agents. In the absence...

This paper investigates the role of social identity in reactions to control. We propose a simple principal-agent model with control that incorporates the existence of social groups. Our laboratory experiment shows that, in contrast to no-group agents, agents in social groups (i) perform better;...

Under the conditions of the global financial and economic crisis restructuring undertaken by companies often is associated with the optimization of operating costs in the dimension of human capital. Relatively little popular technique is responsible outplacement, which can reduce the risk of...

We study gender diversity and performance in endogenously formed teams. Participants choose to either perform a cooperation task with members of the own gender only or in a mixed-gender team. We find that independent of the team choice, initially men cooperate significantly more than women. In...

In a repeated real effort team production experiment workers receive a distorted signal about their co-players’ previous efforts. We vary the degree to which production can be directly traced back to a participant’s real or randomly drawn effort level. We find that individuals produce much...