Collective Bargaining and Innovation in Germany: Cooperative Industrial Relations?

John Addison, Paulino Teixeira, Katalin Evers () and Lutz Bellmann ()
Additional contact information
Katalin Evers: Institute for Employment Research (IAB), Nuremberg
Lutz Bellmann: Institute for Employment Research (IAB), Nuremberg

No 7871, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: The effect of collective bargaining on innovation has long been in dispute. At the level of theory, the hold-up problem has been used to justify positive as well as negative effects of unionism. At the empirical level, although some would consider the North American evidence as cut and dried, this is not the case for other countries. In Europe there is some suggestion that certain industrial relations systems, either alone or in combination with the regulatory framework in which they are embedded, may tip the balance in favor of a beneficial union effect. In the present paper, we assemble nationally representative data for Germany – for many observers the exemplar of a cooperative industrial relations regime – to investigate the impact of collective bargaining on (several measures of) process innovation and product innovation. Our cross section and longitudinal analysis fails to indicate that unionism retards innovation. Indeed, in conjunction with workplace representation, collective bargaining at sectoral level might even be pro innovative.

Keywords: innovation; collective bargaining; Germany (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J51 J53 O31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 46 pages
Date: 2013-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-eur, nep-ino and nep-knm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Forthcoming - revised version published as 'Collective Bargaining and Innovation in Germany: A Case of Cooperative Industrial Relations?' in: Industrial Relations, 2017, 56(1), 73-121.

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp7871.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Collective Bargaining and Innovation in Germany: Cooperative Industrial Relations? (2014)
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:dp7871

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 ().