This paper investigates the interaction between establishment-level codetermination and industry-level collective bargaining in Germany. Based on a simple bargaining model we derive our main hypothesis: In establishments covered by collective bargaining agreements works councils are more likely to be engaged in productivity enhancing activities and less engaged in rent seeking activities than their counterparts in uncovered firms. Using data from German manufacturing establishments, our empirical analysis confirms this hypothesis. The presence of works councils exerts a positive impact on productivity within the covered industrial relations regime but not within the uncovered industrial relations regime. In contrast, the presence of works councils has a positive effect on wages within the uncovered industrial relations regime but not to the same degree within the covered industrial relations regime.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in its series IZA Discussion Papers with number
322.
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.) This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.