Estimating the response of hours worked to technology shocks is often considered as a crucial step for evaluating the applicability of macroeconomic models to reality. In particular, Galí [1999] has considered the conditional correlation between employment and productivity as a key tool for...

The US has legislated to abolish its social security earnings test. A priori it is not possible to predict the effect this will have on work incentives. Using data from the Family Expenditure Survey we show that the abolition of the earnings rule in the UK increased the number of hours worked by...

We explore the relationship between relative physical attractiveness in the household and the hours worked by married men and women. Using PSID data, we find that husbands who are thinner relative to their wives work fewer hours, while wives who are heavier relative to their husbands work more...

This paper attempts to investigate the impact of sectoral wage laws in South Africa. Specifically, we examine the impact of minimum wage laws promulgated in the Retail, Domestic work, Forestry, Security, and Taxi sectors using 15 waves of biannual Labour Force Survey data for the 2000-2007...

This paper analyzes the costs of job loss in China, using unique new data from the Rural-to-Urban Migration in China (RUMIC) data set for the year 2009. We investigate conventional labor market outcomes upon displacement like the length of unemployment spells, hours worked and monthly earnings....

Working-age Americans work longer hours than adults in other industrialized countries. At the same time, the United States. has one of the least equal income distributions of any rich country. This paper provides a cross-national analysis of the impact of the exceptional U.S. income distribution...

Prior empirical studies have found that American workers report longer hours than workers in other highly industrialized countries, and that the highly educated report the longest hours relative to other educational levels. This paper analyzes disparities in working hours by gender and education...

This study uses data for the U.S. from the May 1991 CPS and for Germany from the 1990 wave of the Socioeconomic Panel (GSOEP) to analyze when people work during the day and week. The evidence shows: 1) Work in the evenings or at night is quite common in both countries, with around 7 percent of...

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. Using data from the German...