IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eme/ijmpps/ijm-05-2017-0100.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Some surprising facts about working time accounts and the business cycle in Germany

Author

Listed:
  • Almut Balleer
  • Britta Gehrke
  • Christian Merkl

Abstract

Purpose - Working time accounts (WTAs) allow firms to smooth hours worked over time. The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether this increase in flexibility has also affected how firms adjust employment in Germany over the business cycle. Design/methodology/approach - This paper uses rich microeconomic panel data and fixed effects estimations to compare the employment adjustment of firms with and without WTAs. Findings - The authors show that firms with WTAs show a similar separation and hiring behavior in response to revenue changes as firms without WTAs. One possible explanation is that firms without WTAs used short-time work (STW) to adjust hours worked instead. However, the authors find that firms with WTAs use STW more than firms without WTAs. Originality/value - These findings call into question the popular hypothesis that WTAs were the key driver of the unusually small increase in German unemployment in the Great Recession.

Suggested Citation

  • Almut Balleer & Britta Gehrke & Christian Merkl, 2017. "Some surprising facts about working time accounts and the business cycle in Germany," International Journal of Manpower, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 38(7), pages 940-953, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:eme:ijmpps:ijm-05-2017-0100
    DOI: 10.1108/IJM-05-2017-0100
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJM-05-2017-0100/full/html?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJM-05-2017-0100/full/pdf?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1108/IJM-05-2017-0100?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ellguth, Peter & Gerner, Hans-Dieter & Zapf, Ines, 2018. "Arbeitszeitkonten in Betrieben und Verwaltungen: Flexible Arbeitszeitgestaltung wird immer wichtiger (Flexible working times become more and more important)," IAB-Kurzbericht 201815, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany].
    2. Hutter, Christian & Klinger, Sabine & Trenkler, Carsten & Weber, Enzo, 2019. "Which factors are behind Germany's labour market upswing?," IAB-Discussion Paper 201920, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany].
    3. Ghosh, Sugata & Mitra, Anirban, 2022. "Ethnic identities, public spending and political regimes," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 256-279.
    4. Andrey Launov, 2021. "Working Time Accounts and Turnover," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 123(3), pages 1025-1056, July.
    5. Arabzadeh, Hamzeh & Balleer, Almut & Gehrke, Britta, 2020. "Uncovering the Mechanism(s): Financial Constraints and Wages," IZA Discussion Papers 13979, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Zapf, Ines, 2018. "Verbreitung und betriebliche Bestimmungsfaktoren von Arbeitszeitkonten [Distribution of working-time accounts and its establishment-specific determinants]," Industrielle Beziehungen. Zeitschrift für Arbeit, Organisation und Management, Verlag Barbara Budrich, vol. 25(1), pages 51-81.
    7. Alexander Herzog-Stein & Patrick Nuess & Lennert Peede & Ulrike Stein, 2021. "Germanys Labour Market in Coronavirus Distress New Challenges to Safeguarding Employment," IMK Working Paper 209-2021, IMK at the Hans Boeckler Foundation, Macroeconomic Policy Institute.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Business cycles; Short-time work; Working time accounts; E20; E24; J20; J30;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E20 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • J20 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - General
    • J30 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eme:ijmpps:ijm-05-2017-0100. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Emerald Support (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.