We estimate the effects of worker voice on job quality and separations. We leverage the 1991 introduction of worker representation on boards of Finnish firms with at least 150 employees. In contrast to exit-voice theory, our difference-in-differences design reveals no effects on voluntary job separations, and at most small positive effects on other measures of job quality (job security, health, subjective job quality, and wages). Worker voice slightly raised firm survival, productivity, and capital intensity. A 2008 introduction of shop-floor representation had similarly limited effects. Interviews and surveys indicate that worker representation facilitates information sharing rather than boosting labor's power.

Standard labor market models assume that workers hold accurate beliefs about the external wage distribution, and hence their outside options with other employers.We test this assumption by comparing German workers' beliefs about outside options with objective benchmarks.First, we find that workers wrongly anchor their beliefs about outside options on their current wage: workers that would experience a 10%wage change if switching to their outside option only expect a 1% change.Second, workers in low-paying firms underestimate wages elsewhere.Third, in response to information about the wages of similar workers, respondents correct their beliefs about their outside options and change their job search and wage negotiation intentions.Finally, we analyze the consequences of anchoring in a simple equilibrium model.In the model, anchored beliefs keep overly pessimistic workers stuck in low-wage jobs, which gives rise to monopsony power and labor market segmentation.

What are the long-term economic effects of a more equal distribution of wealth? We exploit variation in historical inheritance rules for land in Germany. In some German areas, inherited land was to be shared or divided equally among children, while in others land was ruled to be indivisible. Using a geographic regression discontinuity design, we show that equal division of land led to a more equal distribution of land; other potential drivers of growth are smooth at the boundary and equal division areas were not historically more developed. Today, equal division areas feature higher average incomes and a right-shifted skill, income, and wealth distribution. Higher top incomes and top wealth in equal division areas coincide with higher education, and higher labor productivity. We show evidence consistent with the more even distribution of land leading to more innovative industrial by-employment during Germany's transition from an agrarian to an industrial economy and, in the long-run, more entrepreneurship.

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.

We estimate how much firms differentiate pay premia between regular and outsourced workers in temp agency work arrangements. We leverage unique Argentinian administrative data that feature links between user firms (the workplaces where temp workers perform their labor) and temp agencies (their formal employers). We estimate that a high-wage user firm that pays a regular worker a 10% premium pays a temp worker on average only a 4.9% premium, compared to what these workers would earn in a low-wage user firm in their respective work arrangements. This 49% pass-through constitutes the midpoint between the benchmarks for insiders (one) and the competitive spot-labor market (zero).

We study how labor market conditions affect unionization decisions. Tight labor markets might spur unionization, e.g., by reducing the threat of unemployment after management opposition or employer retaliation in response to a unionization attempt. Tightness might also weaken unionization by providing attractive outside alternatives to engaging in costly unionization. Drawing on a large-scale, representative survey experiment among U.S. workers, we show that an increase in worker beliefs about labor market tightness moderately raises support for union activity. Effect sizes are small as they imply that moving from trough to peak of the business cycle increases workers’ probability of voting for a union by one percentage point. To study equilibrium effects, we draw on three quasi-experimental research designs using data from across U.S. states and counties over several decades. We find no systematic effect of changes in aggregate labor market tightness on union membership, union elections, and strikes. Overall, our results challenge the notion that labor market tightness significantly drives U.S. unionization.Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

We present a sharp test for the efficiency of job separations. First, we document a dramatic increase in the separation rate – 11.2ppt (28%) over five years – in response to a quasi-experimental extension of UI benefit duration for older workers. Second, after the abolition of the policy, the "job survivors" in the formerly treated group exhibit exactly the same separation behavior as the control group. Juxtaposed, these facts reject the "Coasean" prediction of efficient separations, whereby the UI extensions should have extracted marginal (low-surplus) jobs and thereby rendered the remaining (high-surplus) jobs more resilient after its abolition. Third, we show that a formal model of predicted efficient separations implies a piece-wise linear function of the actual control group separations beyond the missing mass of marginal matches. A structural estimation reveals point estimates of the share of efficient separations below 4%, with confidence intervals rejecting shares above 13%. Fourth, to characterize the marginal jobs in the data, we extend complier analysis to difference-in-difference settings such as ours. The UI-indiced separators stemmed from declining firms, blue-collar jobs, with a high share of sick older workers, and firms more likely to have works councils – while their wages were similar to program survivors. The evidence is consistent with a "non-Coasean" framework building on wage frictions preventing efficient bargaining, and with formal or informal institutional constraints on selective separations.

Abstract Germany faces an intense debate around labor and skills shortages. The authors argue that increased competition in the labor market and consequently higher wages and better working conditions are a crucial factor to address labor scarcity. This does not mean that other measures to combat labor scarcity, such as reforms to the immigration system, provision of childcare, or tax disincentives are redundant. However, as the demographic transition will dramatically reduce labor supply, increased competition for labor is important to allocate a scarce factor more efficiently.

We estimate how exogenous worker exits affect firms’ demand for incumbent workers and new hires. Drawing on administrative data from Germany, we analyze 34,000 unexpected worker deaths, which, on average, raise the remaining workers’ wages and retention probabilities. The average effect masks substantial heterogeneity: Coworkers in the same occupation as the deceased see positive wage effects; coworkers in other occupations experience wage decreases when a high-skilled or specialized worker dies. Our findings imply substantial replacement costs, which are larger in thin markets and when skills are specialized.

We give an overview of the “German model” of industrial relations. We organize our review by focusing on the two pillars of the model: sectoral collective bargaining and firm-level codetermination. Relative to the United States, Germany outsources collective bargaining to the sectoral level, resulting in higher coverage and the avoidance of firm-level distributional conflict. Relative to other European countries, Germany makes it easy for employers to avoid coverage or use flexibility provisions to deviate downwards from collective agreements. The greater flexibility of the German system may reduce unemployment, but may also erode bargaining coverage and increase inequality. Meanwhile, firm-level codetermination through worker board representation and works councils creates cooperative dialogue between employers and workers. Board representation has few direct impacts owing to worker representatives’ minority vote share, but works councils, which hold a range of substantive powers, may be more impactful. Overall, the German model highlights tensions between efficiency-enhancing flexibility and equity-enhancing collective action.

How does codetermination—entitling workers to participate in firm governance, either through membership on company boards or the formation of works councils—affect worker welfare and corporate decision-making? We critically discuss the history and contemporary operation of European codetermination arrangements and review empirical evidence on their effects on firms and workers. Our review suggests that these arrangements are unlikely to significantly shift power in the workplace, but may mildly improve worker welfare and firm performance, in part by boosting information-sharing and cooperation and in part by slightly increasing worker influence.

The authors provide a comprehensive overview of codetermination, that is, worker representation in firms’ governance and management. The available micro evidence points to zero or small positive effects of codetermination on worker and firm outcomes and leaves room for moderate positive effects on productivity, wages, and job stability. The authors also present new country-level, general-equilibrium event studies of codetermination reforms between the 1960s and 2010s, finding no effects on aggregate economic outcomes or the quality of industrial relations. They offer three explanations for the institution’s limited impact. First, existing codetermination laws convey little authority to workers. Second, countries with codetermination laws have high baseline levels of informal worker voice. Third, codetermination laws may interact with other labor market institutions, such as union representation and collective bargaining. The article closes with a discussion of the implications for recent codetermination proposals in the United States.

We thank Nelson Mesker for excellent research assistance and Tommy O’Donnell for help with the draft. We thank the editor Lawrence Kahn, two referees, Elizabeth Anderson, David Autor, Gabriel Burdín, Markus Helfen, Andrew Linden, Ewan McGaughey, Steffen Müller, Robert Scholz, and Alan Yan for helpful comments. We thank Sjaak van der Velden for sharing compiled and digitized versions of the ILO data with us. Jäger thanks the MIT Policy Lab for financial support. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Zusammenfassung Der Nobelpreis für Wirtschaftswissenschaften geht 2021 an David Card für seine empirischen Beiträge zur Arbeitsökonomik sowie an Joshua Angrist und Guido Imbens für ihre methodischen Beiträge zur Analyse kausaler Zusammenhänge. Die Analyse kausaler Zusammenhänge in der empirischen Ökonomik wurde durch die von den Preisträgern maßgeblich vorangetriebene Methodik der natürlichen Experimente revolutioniert. Anhand der Wirkung von Mindestlöhnen, Mitbestimmung und der Arbeitslosenversicherung lässt sich illustrieren, wie durch natürliche Experimente neue wissenschaftliche Einsichten erlangt werden, die eine empirische Grundlage für eine evidenzbasierte Politikberatung bilden können.

We estimate the wage effects of shared governance, or codetermination, in the form of a mandate of one-third of corporate board seats going to worker representatives. We study a reform in Germany that abruptly abolished this mandate for stock corporations incorporated after August 1994, while it locked the mandate for the slightly older cohorts. Our research design compares firm cohorts incorporated before the reform and after; in a robustness check we draw on the analogous difference in unaffected firm types (LLCs). We find no effects of board-level codetermination on wages and the wage structure, even in firms with particularly flexible wages. The degree of rent sharing and the labor share are also unaffected. We reject that disinvestment could have offset wage effects through the canonical hold-up channel, as shared governance, if anything, increases capital formation.