Works Councils and Workplace Health Promotion in Germany

Stephen Smith, Uwe Jirjahn and Jens Mohrenweiser

Working Papers from The George Washington University, Institute for International Economic Policy

Abstract: From a theoretical viewpoint, there can be market failures resulting in an underprovision of occupational health and safety. Works councils may help mitigate these failures. Using establishment data from Germany, our empirical analysis confirms that the incidence of a works council is significantly associated with an increased likelihood that the establishment provides more workplace health promotion than required by law. This result also holds in a recursive bivariate probit regression accounting for the possible endogeneity of works council incidence. Furthermore, analyzing potentially moderating factors such as collective bargaining coverage, industry, type of ownership, multi-establishment status and product market competition, we find a positive association between works councils and workplace health promotion for the various types of establishments examined. Finally, we go beyond the mere incidence of workplace health promotion and show that works councils are positively associated with a series of different measures of workplace health promotion.

Keywords: Non-union employee representation; works council; codetermination; worker voice; occupational health and safety; workplace health promotion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 J28 J50 J81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 51 pages
Date: 2019-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-lma and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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http://www2.gwu.edu/~iiep/assets/docs/papers/2019WP/SmithIIEP2019-1.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Works councils and workplace health promotion in Germany (2022)
Working Paper: Works Councils and Workplace Health Promotion in Germany (2019)
Working Paper: Works Councils and Workplace Health Promotion in Germany (2019)
Working Paper: Works Councils and Workplace Health Promotion in Germany (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gwi:wpaper:2019-1

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