Abstract

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.

中文翻译：

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董事会劳动*

摘要

我们以强制要求将三分之一的公司董事会席位分配给工人代表的形式来评估共享治理或共事决定的工资效应。我们研究了德国的一项改革，该改革突然取消了1994年8月以后成立的股份公司的这项授权，而将其授权锁定了年龄稍大的同龄人。我们的研究设计比较了改革前和改革后成立的公司。在稳健性检查中，我们利用了未受影响公司类型（LLC）的类似差异。我们发现，即使在具有特别灵活的工资的公司中，董事会级别的合规裁定对工资和工资结构也没有影响。租金分担的程度和劳动分担的程度也不受影响。我们拒绝认为，通过共同的治理（如果有的话），取消投资可能会通过规范的扣留渠道抵消工资效应。