Hourly versus Salaried Payment and Decisions about Trading Time and Money over Time

Using longitudinal data from the British Household Panel Survey, the authors examine how individuals' employment compensation—salaried or hourly—affects their decisions to trade time for money. Results indicate that there is a positive association between hourly wages and a desire to exchange leisure time for more money. This relationship holds even when a fixed-effects model controls for unobserved differences among individuals as well as for job-relevant factors, including income, hours worked, tenure, and satisfaction. Evidence also suggests that after changing jobs in which pay schemes change from hourly to salaried, individuals' preferences remain the same in the short term, but effects of these preferences do decay over time, consistent with the notion of psychological salience.