EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

The inefficiency of regular reliance on short-time work

Pierre Cahuc and Sandra Nevoux
Additional contact information
Sandra Nevoux: Centre de recherche de la Banque de France - Banque de France

Institut des Politiques Publiques from HAL

Abstract: Short-time work makes it possible for companies faced with temporary and exceptional circumstances to receive subsidies to reduce the number of hours worked by their employees by remunerating the time off. Short-time work has both beneficial and detrimental effects. During the Great Recession of 2008-2009, there was renewed interest in short-time work as part of the fight against unemployment, particularly in France, where it underwent successive reforms. This policy brief shows that the short-time work reforms carried out after the recession have mainly benefited large firms using them on a regular basis to cope with seasonal fluctuations in business activity. This expansion of short-time work is inefficient because it subsidizes periods of inactivity, thus reducing total output. In this context, it would be desirable to introduce a bonus-malus system by which companies would fund short-time work via a tax paid over several years and that is proportional to their contribution to the cost of the scheme.

Date: 2018-06
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-02552884
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in 2018

Downloads: (external link)
https://shs.hal.science/halshs-02552884/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The inefficiency of regular reliance on short-time work (2018) Downloads
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:hal:ipppap:halshs-02552884

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Institut des Politiques Publiques from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Caroline Bauer ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-22
Handle: RePEc:hal:ipppap:halshs-02552884