IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/32740.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Worker Representatives

Author

Listed:
  • Julian Budde
  • Thomas Dohmen
  • Simon Jäger
  • Simon Trenkle

Abstract

We study the descriptive and substantive representation of workers through worker representatives, focusing on the selection of German works council representatives and their impact on worker outcomes. Becoming a professional representative leads to substantial wage gains for the elected, concentrated among blue-collar workers. Representatives are positively selected in terms of pre-election earnings and person fixed effects. They are more likely to have undergone vocational training, show greater interest in politics, and lean left politically compared to the employees they represent; blue-collar workers are close to proportionally represented among works councilors. Drawing on a retirement-IV strategy and event-study designs around council elections, we find that blue-collar representatives reduce involuntary separations, consistent with blue-collar workers placing stronger emphasis on job security

Suggested Citation

  • Julian Budde & Thomas Dohmen & Simon Jäger & Simon Trenkle, 2024. "Worker Representatives," NBER Working Papers 32740, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32740
    Note: AG CF LE LS PE POL PR
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w32740.pdf
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J5 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining
    • J51 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - Trade Unions: Objectives, Structure, and Effects
    • J54 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - Producer Cooperatives; Labor Managed Firms
    • J63 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Turnover; Vacancies; Layoffs
    • P12 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Enterprises
    • P13 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Cooperative Enterprises

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32740. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.