Loosening hours constraints on the supply of labor: what if Germans had a Dutch labor market?

Elke Wolf

No 00-54, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: 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 certain jobs and occupations. Therefore, I simulate Germans' working hours in a more flexible but real world, namely the Dutch labor market. The results indicate that the average weekly working hours of German employees would indeed decrease if they had a Dutch Labor market. Thus, there exists some potential for additional work-sharing in Germany. Furthermore, the match between actual and desired hours of Germans would improve if Germans faced the same hours flexibility as Dutch employees. This holds both for men and for women. Another piece of good news is that hours restrictions shrank over time, which means, Germany seems to be moving towards a more flexible labor market.

JEL-codes: J22 J23 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2000
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/24402/1/dp0054.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:zbw:zewdip:5338

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().