Total employment in Germany is supposed to increase if people could realize their desired working hours. However, this back-of-the-envelope calculation overestimates the effect of loosening hours constraints, because even in a very flexible labor market there will exist hours restrictions for...

This paper investigates the impact of a collective agreement stipulating a one shot increase in establishment-specific wage levels in a public-sector setting where wages otherwise are set according to individualized wage bargaining. The agreement stipulated that wages should increase in...

Several key trends across most advanced economic economies have increased both desired hours of work and the salience of working time on well-being. Models in the economics discipline offer both labor supply and labor demand reasons to explain why many people might be willing to work longer...

This paper studies worker and job flows at the establishment and aggregate levels. The paper is built around a set of facts concerning the variability of unemployment and vacancies in the aggregate, the distribution of net employment growth and the comovement of hours and employment growth at...

We propose a model to evaluate the U.K.’s zero-hours contract (ZHC) – a contract that exempts employers from the requirement to provide any minimum working hours, and allows workers to decline any workload. We find quantitatively mixed welfare effects of ZHCs. On one hand they unlock job...

We propose a model to evaluate the U.K.'s zero-hours contract (ZHC) - a contract that exempts employers from the requirement to provide any minimum working hours, and allows employees to decline any workload. We find quantitatively that ZHCs improve welfare by enabling firms with more volatile...

This paper examines whether the intensity of Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs) during the COVID-19 pandemic has differentially impacted the public sector labor market outcomes. This extends the analysis of the already documented negative economic consequences from COVID-19 and their...

Erwartungsgemäß reagieren die Unternehmen auf den plötzlichen Rückgang ihrer Arbeitskräftenachfrage im Zuge der Corona-Pandemie mit einer abgestuften Maßnahmenkette. Stark rückläufig sind die Einstellungen, sodass Arbeitsuchende derzeit nur schwer einen Zugang in den Arbeitsmarkt finden....

This paper studies the employment and income effects of a federal proposal in 2016 to expand overtime coverage to additionally cover salaried workers earning between $455 and $913 per week ($23,660 and $47,476 per annum). Although the policy was unexpectedly nullified a week before its proposed...

Work hours mismatches among the employed are common. About 7 percent prefer fewer than their current work hours even if it means less income, while another 25 percent want more hours and income, virtually the same as in 1985. Overemployment is higher for women, whites, married, parents of young...