Are the French Happy with the 35-Hour Workweek?

Marcello Estevão and Filipa Sa ()
Additional contact information
Filipa Sa: King's College London

No 2459, IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER

Abstract: Legally mandated reductions in the workweek can be either a constraint on individuals’ choice or a tool to coordinate individuals’ preferences for lower work hours. We confront these two hypotheses by studying the consequences of the workweek reduction in France from 39 to 35 hours, which was first applied to large firms in 2000. Using the timing difference by firm size to set up a quasi-experiment and data from the French labor force survey, we show that the law constrained the choice of a significant number of individuals: dual-job holdings increased, some workers in large firms went to small firms where hours were not constrained, and others were replaced by cheaper, unemployed individuals as relative hourly wages increased in large firms. Employment of persons directly affected by the law declined, although the net effect on aggregate employment was not significant.

Keywords: welfare; job-sharing; coordination; workweek (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 E24 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2006-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-mac
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Published - revised version published as 'The 35-hour workweek in France: Straightjacket or welfare improvement? ' in: Economic Policy, 2008, 23 (55), 417-463

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp2459.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Are the French Happy with the 35-Hour Workweek? (2006)
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:iza:izadps:dp2459

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mark Fallak ().