The Effects of Labor Market Conditions on Working Time: the US-EU Experience
Claudio Michelacci () and
Josep Pijoan-Mas
Additional contact information
Claudio Michelacci: CEMFI and CEPR, Spain and The Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis, Italy
Working Paper series from Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis
Abstract:
We consider a labor market search model where, by working longer hours, individuals acquire greater skills and thereby obtain better jobs. We show that job inequality, which leads to within-skill wage differences, gives incentives to work longer hours. By contrast, a higher probability of losing jobs, a longer duration of unemployment, and in general a less tight labor market discourage working time. We show that the different evolution of labor market conditions in the US and in Continental Europe over the last three decades can quantitatively explain the diverging evolution of the number of hours worked per employee across the two sides of the Atlantic. It can also explain why the fraction of prime age male workers working very long hours has increased substantially in the US, after reverting a trend of secular decline.
Keywords: working hours; wage inequality; unemployment; search; human capital filtering (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 G31 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.rcea.org/RePEc/pdf/wp28_08.pdf
Related works:
Working Paper: The Effects of Labor Market Conditions on Working Time: The US-EU Experience (2007) 
Working Paper: The Effects of Labor Market Conditions on Working Time: the US-EU Experience (2007) 
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:rim:rimwps:28_08
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in Working Paper series from Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Marco Savioli ().