Bottleneck congestion and distribution of work start times: The economics of staggered work hours revisited

Yuki Takayama ()

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Since the seminal work of Henderson (1981), a number of studies examined the effect of staggered work hours by analyzing models of work start time choice that consider the trade-off between negative congestion externalities and positive production externalities. However, these studies described traffic congestion using flow congestion models. This study develops a model of work start time choice with bottleneck congestion and discloses the intrinsic properties of the model. To this end, this study extends Henderson’s model to incorporate bottleneck congestion. By utilizing the properties of a potential game, we characterize equilibrium and optimal distributions of work start times. We also show that Pigouvian tax/subsidy policies generally yield multiple equilibria and that the first-best optimum must be a stable equilibrium under Pigouvian policies, whereas the second-best optimum in which policymakers cannot eliminate queuing congestion can be unstable.

Keywords: staggered work hours; bottleneck congestion; production effects; potential game; stability; Pigouvian policies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C62 C72 C73 D62 R41 R48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-08-30
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gth and nep-tre
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Related works:
Journal Article: Bottleneck congestion and distribution of work start times: The economics of staggered work hours revisited (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:59033

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