TY - JOUR
T1 - Long Working Hours Make Us Less Productive but Also Less Costly
AU - Delmez, Françoise
AU - Vandenberghe, Vincent
N1 - Funding Information:
Both authors would like to thank all the seminar participants who provided feedback on earlier versions of this work. F. Delmez gratefully acknowledges funding from the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 CEIS, Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Copyright:
Copyright 2018 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2018/12/1
Y1 - 2018/12/1
N2 - This paper develops and assesses empirically a simple model of firms’ optimal decision regarding working hours, where productivity varies with hours and where the firm faces quasi‐fixed labour costs. Using Belgian firm‐level data on production, labour costs, workers, and hours, and focusing on the estimation of elasticities along the isoquant and the isocost, we find evidence of not only declining productivity of hours but also of quasi‐fixed labour costs in the range of 20 per cent of total labour costs. The tentative conclusion is that firms facing such costs are enticed to raise working hours, even if this results in lower productivity.
AB - This paper develops and assesses empirically a simple model of firms’ optimal decision regarding working hours, where productivity varies with hours and where the firm faces quasi‐fixed labour costs. Using Belgian firm‐level data on production, labour costs, workers, and hours, and focusing on the estimation of elasticities along the isoquant and the isocost, we find evidence of not only declining productivity of hours but also of quasi‐fixed labour costs in the range of 20 per cent of total labour costs. The tentative conclusion is that firms facing such costs are enticed to raise working hours, even if this results in lower productivity.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85055995033&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - https://perso.uclouvain.be/vincent.vandenberghe/Papers/Long_working_hours.pdf
UR - http://www.mendeley.com/research/long-working-hours-make-less-productive-also-less-costly
U2 - 10.1111/labr.12128
DO - 10.1111/labr.12128
M3 - Article
SN - 1467-9914
VL - 32
SP - 259
EP - 287
JO - Labour
JF - Labour
IS - 4
ER -