Market Transition and the Deinstitutionalization of Standard Work Hours in Post-Socialist China

Yang Cao and Beth A. Rubin

ILR Review, 2014, vol. 67, issue 3, 864-890

Abstract: The authors investigate the relationship between market transition and work hours in urban China. Regression analysis of data from the 2006 Chinese General Social Survey reveals a negative relationship between economic marketization, measured at the province level, and the likelihood that an employee works standard hours. Standard hours are less common among those working for smaller employers, which are less subject to outside scrutiny. This relationship between employer size and standard hours is stronger in more marketized regions. These findings support the authors’ argument that standard work hours are deinstitutionalized as employers strive for low cost and flexibility in China’s increasingly marketized but poorly regulated economy. Comparisons of the Chinese experience with recent trends in the United States reveal remarkable similarities in the weakening of social employment contracts precipitated by the ascendency of markets and the systematic disempowering of labor.

Keywords: work hours; institutional change; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ilrrev:v:67:y:2014:i:3:p:864-890

DOI: 10.1177/0019793914537454

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