The Impact of Part-Time Work on Firm Total Factor Productivity: Evidence from Italy

Francesco Devicienti (), Elena Grinza and Davide Vannoni

No 9463, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: In this paper, we explore the impact of part-time work on firm productivity. Using a large panel data set of Italian corporations' balance sheets for the period 2000-2010, we first estimate the total factor productivity (TFP) of each firm for each year. We use different approaches aimed at solving input simultaneity, including a version of Ackerberg et al.'s (2006) control function approach, which accounts for firm fixed effects. We then match the TFP estimates with rich information on the firms' use of part-time work obtained from survey data and estimate the impact of part-time work on TFP at the firm level. We find that an increase of 1 standard deviation in the part-time share reduces TFP by 2.03%. The results suggest that this harmful effect stems from horizontal rather than vertical part-time arrangements. We also find that firms declaring that they use part-time work to accommodate workers' requests suffer the most. Moreover, we show that the so-called 'flexible' and 'elastic' clauses are successful in reducing the negative impact associated with part-time work.

Keywords: firm total factor productivity (TFP); flexible and elastic clauses; horizontal and vertical part-time contracts; part-time work; semiparametric estimation methods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J23 L23 L25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 43 pages
Date: 2015-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-eff, nep-ino and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Published - published in: Industrial and Corporate Change, 2018, 27 (2), 321 - 347

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp9463.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Impact of Part-Time Work on Firm Total Factor Productivity: Evidence from Italy (2015)
Working Paper: The Impact of Part-Time Work on Firm Total Factor Productivity: Evidence from Italy (2015)
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:dp9463

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().