Leisure externalities across households have potentially very important implications for labor market regulations, but they have proven difficult to identify. This paper exploits the unique features of school holidays and regulations about paid leave in France to identify how changes in the...

We present a non-cooperative model of a family's time allocation between work and a home-produced public good, and examine whether the income tax should apply to couples or individuals. While tax-induced labor supply distortions lead to overprovision of the public good, spouses' failure to...

This paper uncovers 'conspicuous work' as a new form of status seeking that can explain social interactions in labour supply. We analyse how peer working time relates to both labour supply and happiness for Dutch male workers. Using a unique measure of peer weekly working time, we find that...

Status considerations with respect to consumption give rise to negative externalities because individuals do not take into account that their decisions affect the relative consumption position of others. Further, status concerns create incentives for excessive labour supply in competitive...

Status considerations with respect to consumption give rise to negative externalities because individuals do not take into account that their decisions affect the relative consumption position of others. Further, status concerns create incentives for excessive labour supply in competitive...

Status considerations with respect to consumption give rise to negative externalities because individuals do not take into account that their decisions affect the relative consumption position of others. Further, status concerns create incentives for excessive labour supply in competitive...

We investigate whether working time is related to the intensity of income comparisons and relative income. Our simple theoretical model demonstrates that the effects of relative income concerns depend on whether an individual can choose contractual working hours and/or overtime. In the empirical...

We investigate Veblen effects on work hours, namely the way that a desire to emulate the consumption standards of the rich induces longer work hours among the rest. Consistent with our model of these asymmetric social comparisons, greater inequality predicts longer work hours in ten OECD...

This paper investigates whether one's effort to keep up with the Joneses has any effect on labor supply behavior. We provide a simple model and empirical evidence that labor supply decisions of married women are influenced by relative as well as absolute income of their husbands. We find, after...

We theoretically analyse the effects of sick pay and employees' health on collective bargaining, assuming that individuals determine absence optimally. If sick pay is set by the government and not paid for by firms, it induces the trade union to lower wages. This mitigates the positive impact on...