Do Unions and Works Councils Really Dampen the Gender Pay Gap? Discordant Evidence from Germany

Michael Oberfichtner, Claus Schnabel and Marina Töpfer ()
Additional contact information
Marina Töpfer: University of Erlangen-Nuremberg

No 13576, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Using a large employer-employee dataset, we provide new evidence on the relationship between the gender pay gap and industrial relations from within German workplaces. Controlling for unobserved workplace heterogeneity, we find no evidence that introducing or abandoning collective agreements or works councils affects the gender pay gap. This result holds at the mean and along the distribution, challenging the stylized fact that unions and works councils dampen the gender pay gap.

Keywords: works council; industrial relations; gender pay gap; collective bargaining; Germany (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J31 J50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2020-08
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Published - published in: Economics Letters, 2020, 196, 109509

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp13576.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Do unions and works councils really dampen the gender pay gap? Discordant evidence from Germany (2020)
Working Paper: Do unions and works councils really dampen the gender pay gap? Discordant evidence from Germany (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp13576

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().