 Enhancing Team Productivity through Shorter Working Hours: Evidence from the Great RecessionRuo Shangguan, Jed DeVaro and Hideo Owan Discussion papers from Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI) Abstract: When output demand drops during recessions, employers decrease labor inputs by cutting workers and/or hours. If pre-recession hours were excessive, cutting hours might increase labor productivity, given an inverted-U-shaped hours-productivity profile. When total hours decrease in team settings, labor reallocation causes hours to be concentrated among top performers. The adjustment process is examined using single-firm Japanese data on construction design projects. A theoretical model is proposed and calibrated to analyze within-team labor allocation. We find that in response to the decrease in hours resulting from the 2008-2009 global financial crisis: (1) total productivity improves by more than the increase in individual productivity, the labor share becomes more concentrated, and team size decreases; (2) the productivity improvement is greater for larger teams and less productive teams; (3) larger teams exhibit lower average productivity because weaker workers join teams when more hours are needed than the top performers can handle. Pages: 52 pages Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eti:dpaper:21040 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Discussion papers from Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI) Contact information at EDIRC. |
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