Tobias Brändle

Opening Clauses in Collective Bargaining Agreements: More Flexibility to Save Jobs?

Collective bargaining agreements have been said to decrease deployment since the work of Calmfors and Driffill (1988). We investigate empirically whether opening clauses, flexible elements that have been introduced to reduce the decline in coverage, can indeed minimise this effect and increase job growth in covered firms. Using representative data on German establishments, the IAB Establishment Panel, in combination with data on opening clauses from the IAW, and performing propensity score matching to control for selectivity bias, we find that the existence of opening clauses has significantly negative effects on job destruction rates and that it increases job growth by approximately 0.73% per year. However, it does not seem the case that firms with explicit knowledge of opening clauses anticipate their increased flexibility, since they do not have higher job creation rates. As regards the actual application of opening clauses, our results do not show additional effects.

Self-Employment, Educational Attainment and Employment Protection Legislation

We analyse how educational attainment and employment protection influence an individuals decision to become self-employed. By altering expected income from dependent employment, employment protection is likely to affect an individuals choice of occupation, although such a link has not been established in the literature so far. We argue that an interaction between an individuals educational attainment and the institution of employment protection exists when it comes to the decision regarding whether to become self-employed. Based on survey data from OECD countries, we find evidence for a negative interaction, and conclude that only after taking this interaction into account can the effect of employment protection and educational attainment on self-employment rates be assessed.

The One Constant: A Causal Effect of Collective Bargaining on Employment Growth? - Evidence from German Linked-Employer-Employee Data

A large number of articles have analysed ‘the one constant´ in the economic effects of trade unions, namely that union bargaining reduces employment growth by two to four percentage points per year. Evidence is, however, mostly related to Anglo- Saxon countries. We investigate whether a different institutional setting might lead to a different outcome, making the constant a variable entity. We use linked-employer- employee data for Germany and analyse the effect of collective bargaining coverage on employment growth in German plants. We find a robust and negative correlation between being covered by a sector-wide bargaining agreement or firmlevel contract and employment growth per annum of about 0.8 percentage points. Using various approaches, however, we cannot establish a causal interpretation of the effects, suggesting that the cross-section results are driven by selection.

Coaching, Counseling, Case-Working: Do They Help the Older Unemployed Out of Benefit Receipt and Back into the Labor Market?

Abstract Intensified counseling, job search assistance and related policies have been found to be effective for labor market integration of the unemployed by a large number of studies, but the evidence for older and hard-to-place unemployed is more mixed. In this paper, we present key results for a large-scale active labor market program directed at the older unemployed in Germany. To identify the treatment effects, we exploit regional variation in program participation. We use a combination of different evaluation estimators to check the sensitivity of the results to selection, substitution and local labor market effects. We find positive effects of the program in the range of 5-10 percentage points on integration into unsubsidized employment. However, there are also substantial lock-in effects, such that program participants have a higher probability of remaining on public welfare benefit receipt for up to 1 year after commencing the program.

Offshoring and Outsourcing Potentials: Evidence from German Micro‐Level Data

This paper provides two indicators that measure: (i) offshoring potentials (cross‐country geographical relocation) and (ii) outsourcing potentials (organisational relocation) separately at the level of jobs, occupations, tasks and industries. We use four waves of the BIBB/BAuA Labour Force Survey in Germany and apply principal component analysis based on a large set of potential determinants of offshoring and outsourcing derived from the literature. Our results show significant variation across these levels in the determinants of both dimensions. We provide a comprehensive empirical classification of the determinants of how easily jobs can be offshored and outsourced. This can serve as a basis for further research to investigate the economic effects of job offshoreability.

We Want Them All Covered! Collective Bargaining and Firm Heterogeneity: Theory and Evidence from Germany

This paper establishes a link between the extent of collective bargaining and the degree of productivity dispersion within an industry. In a unionised oligopoly model we show that for only small di erences in productivity levels. a sector-union can design a collective wage contract that covers a wide range of heterogeneous firms. In sectors with higher productivity dispersion, an industry union has an incentive to demand firm-level wage contracts with the most productive firms, so that they can prevent low-productivity firms from leaving collective coverage. However, such firm-level contracts may not prevent firms at the lower end of the productivity distribution from avoiding collective coverage in sectors with high productivity dispersion. We test the predictions of the model using German linked employer-employee data between 1996 and 2010 and find support for our theoretical results.

Sickness Absence and Works Councils: Evidence from German Individual and Linked Employer-Employee Data

Using both household and linked employer-employee data for Germany, we assess the effects of non-union representation in the form of works councils on (1) individual sickness absence rates and (2) a subjective measure of personnel problems due to sickness absence as perceived by a firms management. We find that the existence of a works council is positively correlated with the incidence and the annual duration of absence. We observe a more pronounced correlation in western Germany which can also be interpreted causally. Further, personnel problems due to absence are more likely to occur in plants with a works council.