The lump-of-labor fallacy has been called one of the “best known fallacies in economics.” It is widely cited in disparagement of policies for reducing the standard hours of work, yet the authenticity of the fallacy claim is questionable, and explanations of it are inconsistent and...

Summary Assessing the impact of policy-oriented research is fraught with methodological difficulties ranging from attributing influence on policy change to constructing an appropriate counterfactual. The six case studies in this special section address these challenges in the context of...

Sidney Chapman's theory of the hours of labour, published in 1909 in The Economic Journal, was acknowledged as authoritative by the leading economists of the day. It provided important insights into the prospects for market rationality with respect to work time arrangements and hinted at a...