The Demand for Hours of Labor: Direct Evidence from California

Daniel Hamermesh and Stephen Trejo

No 5973, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: For many years California has required that most women receive time-and-a-half for hours of work beyond 8 in a given day. In 1980 this daily overtime penalty was extended to men. This change provides a unique opportunity to estimate the impact of an exogenous increase in the relative price of a marginal hour of labor on the demand for hours of work. Analyzing Current Population Survey data from 1973 and 1985, we find that the overtime penalty substantially reduced the amount of daily overtime worked by California men compared to men in other states and to women in California. Our estimates imply that the price elasticity of demand for overtime hours is at least -0.70.

JEL-codes: J23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1997-03
Note: LS
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Published as Hamermesh, Daniel S. and Stephen J. Trejo. "The Demand For Hours Of Labor: Direct Evidence From California," Review of Economics and Statistics, 2000, v82(1,Feb), 38-47.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w5973.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Demand for Hours of Labor: Direct Evidence from California (2000)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:5973

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w5973

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().