Sinking the blues: the impact of shop closing hours on labor and product markets

Maarten Goos

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: There is a growing consensus among economists that extending shop opening hours creates jobs. While this is probably true in deregulating industries, this paper argues there are some deficiencies in the existing hypotheses about how exactly deregulation affects employment. First, this paper exploits recent changes in Sunday Closing Laws in the US to find that total employment, total revenue and the number of shops increase in deregulating industries and possibly decrease in non-deregulating industries. Second, a model assuming consumers like shopping on Sunday, monopolistic competition and low barriers to entry is presented to show how consumer behavior and retail competition can explain the observed impact of deregulation on retail labor and product markets and therefore ultimately employment.

Keywords: Shop opening hours; labor demand; organization of retail markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J23 L11 L81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 55 pages
Date: 2004-12
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:19925

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