We examine the timing of firms' operations in a formal model of labor demand. Merging a variety of data sets from Portugal from 1995-2004, we describe temporal patterns of firms' demand for labor and estimate production-functions and relative labor-demand equations. The results demonstrate the...

What explains how much people work? Going back in time, a main fact to address is the steady reduction in hours worked. The long-run data, for the U.S. as well as for other countries, show a striking pattern whereby hours worked fall steadily by a little below a half of a percent per year,...

Using Current Population Survey data, I demonstrate a 15-percentage point wage disadvantage among academics compared to all other doctorate-holders with the same demographics. Time-diary data show that academics' work hours are distributed more evenly over the week and day, although their total...

A transformation of what had become a universal 40 hour standard work week in Germany began in 1985 with reductions negotiated in the metal-working and printing sectors. These reductions have continued through 1995, and were followed by reductions in other sectors. The union campaign aimed to...

The effects of supply-side policies in depressed economies are controversial. We shed light on this debate using evidence from France in the 1930s. In 1936, France departed from the gold standard and implemented mandatory wage increases and hours restrictions. Deflation ended but output...

We investigate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on labor activity using real-time data from millions of GitHub users around the world. We show that the pandemic triggered a sharp pattern of labor reallocation at both the global and regional level. Users were more likely to work on weekends...