Welfare, employment, and hours of work

Axel Hall and Gylfi Zoega

No 2019-1, Economics Discussion Papers from Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel)

Abstract: The authors propose an explanation of why Europeans choose to work fewer hours than Americans and also suffer higher rates of unemployment. Labor market regulations, unemployment benefits, and high levels of public consumption in many European countries reduce, ceteris paribus, the gains from being employed, which makes employed workers ask for higher wages relative to productivity. The higher wages make firms offer fewer vacancies, as well as raising the level of consumption enjoyed by workers, which makes them want to enjoy more leisure because consumption and leisure are complements in the utility function.

Keywords: job search; unemployment; working hours (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J63 J64 J65 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-upt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.economics-ejournal.org/economics/discussionpapers/2019-1
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/191894/1/104839087X.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:zbw:ifwedp:20191

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Discussion Papers from Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().