Unions play a crucial role in determining wages and employment outcomes. However, union bargaining power may also have important effects on non-pecuniary working conditions. We study the effects of right-to-work laws, which removed agency shop protection and weakened union powers on long hours...

This paper reviews the literature on the impact of work on health. We consider work along two dimensions: (i) the intensive margin, i.e. how many hours an individual works and (ii) the extensive margin, i.e. whether an individual is in employment or not, independent of the number of hours...

This paper examines the time spent commuting to/from work by workers in fifteen European countries, during the last three decades, with the aim of analyzing recent trends in commuting and the factors affecting commuting behavior in those countries. Using data from several waves of the European...

We develop a theoretical framework to analyze the effects of immigration on native job amenities, focusing on work schedules. Immigrants have a comparative advantage in production at, and lower disamenity cost for nighttime work, which leads them to disproportionately choose nighttime...

Contrary to much of the established literature, this paper finds that though many older workers would prefer to reduce their working hours (the overemployed), there is a significant group who would like to work longer hours (the underemployed). And contrary to the assumption that the...

In 2012, in the midst of a recession, a labour law reform in Portugal allowed firms to reduce the overtime premium paid to their workers by 50% or more. Until then, overtime premiums were set by law at a relatively high level and could not be cut unilaterally. We analyse matched...

The literature on the union wage premium is among the most extensive in labour economics but unions' effects on other aspects of the wage-effort bargain have received much less attention. We contribute to the literature through a study of the union premium in paid holiday entitlements, using...

Despite the ongoing public debate about precarious working conditions in academia, there is only little evidence on working hours and overtime work for the group of (non-tenured) junior academics. By using unique longitudinal survey data on the occupational situation and careers of doctoral...

In this paper, we exploit a panel of industry-level data in European countries to study the economic impact of national reductions in usual weekly working hours between 1995 and 2007. Our identification strategy relies on the five national reforms that took place over this period and on initial...

In the debate over immigration reform, it is frequently asserted that immigrants take jobs that U.S. natives do not want. Using data from the 2000 Census merged with O*NET data on occupation characteristics, I show that the jobs held by immigrants are more physically arduous than the jobs held...