IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/qjecon/v114y1999i1p117-148..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Has Work-Sharing Worked in Germany?

Author

Listed:
  • Jennifer Hunt

Abstract

Starting in 1985, (West) German unions began to reduce standard hours on an industry-by-industry basis, in an attempt to raise employment. Whether this "work-sharing" works is theoretically ambiguous. I exploit the cross-industry variation in standard hours reductions to examine their impact on actual hours worked, wages, and employment. Analysis of industry-level data suggests that "work-sharing" may have reduced employment in the period 1984–1994. Using individual data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, I substantiate the union claim of "full wage compensation:" the hourly wage rose enough to offset the decline in actual hours worked.

Suggested Citation

  • Jennifer Hunt, 1999. "Has Work-Sharing Worked in Germany?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(1), pages 117-148.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:114:y:1999:i:1:p:117-148.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1162/003355399555963
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

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

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:bla:econom:v:54:y:1987:i:213:p:21-40 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Jennifer Hunt, 1996. "The Response of Wages and Actual Hours Worked to the Reduction of Standard Hours in Germany," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 138, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    3. R. A. Hart & T. Sharot, 1978. "The Short-run Demand for Workers and Hours: A Recursive Model," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 45(2), pages 299-309.
    4. Jennifer Hunt, 1996. "The Response of Wages and Actual Hours Worked to the Reductions of Standard Hours," NBER Working Papers 5716, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. repec:bla:econom:v:56:y:1989:i:224:p:473-86 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Earle, John S & Pencavel, John, 1990. "Hours of Work and Trade Unionism," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 8(1), pages 150-174, January.
    7. repec:bla:ecorec:v:69:y:1993:i:207:p:428-36 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. repec:bla:econom:v:54:y:1987:i:214:p:237-48 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Linda Bell & Richard Freeman, 1994. "Why Do Americans and Germans Work Different Hours?," NBER Working Papers 4808, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Calmfors, Lars, 1985. "Work sharing, employment and wages," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 293-309.
    11. G Houpis, 1993. "The Effect of Lower Hours of Work on Wages and Employment," CEP Discussion Papers dp0131, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    12. Alison Booth & Martin Ravallion, 1993. "Employment and Length of the Working Week in a Unionized Economy in which Hours of Work Influence Productivity," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 69(4), pages 428-436, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kapteyn, Arie & Kalwij, Adriaan & Zaidi, Asghar, 2004. "The myth of worksharing," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 293-313, June.
    2. Jennifer Hunt, 1996. "The Response of Wages and Actual Hours Worked to the Reductions of Standard Hours," NBER Working Papers 5716, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Jennifer Hunt, 1996. "The Response of Wages and Actual Hours Worked to the Reduction of Standard Hours in Germany," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 138, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    4. Tor Jacobson & Henry Ohlsson, 2000. "Working time, employment, and work sharing: Evidence from Sweden," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 25(1), pages 169-187.
    5. Marimon, Ramon & Zilibotti, Fabrizio, 2000. "Employment and distributional effects of restricting working time," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(7), pages 1291-1326, June.
    6. Jennifer Hunt, 1998. "Hours Reductions as Work-Sharing," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 29(1), pages 339-381.
    7. Nordström Skans, Oskar, 2001. "The effects of working time reductions on wages, actual hours and equilibrium unemployment," Working Paper Series 2001:8, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
    8. de Regt, E.R., 1999. "Wage bargaining, working time and unemployment," Research Memorandum 027, Maastricht University, Maastricht Research School of Economics of Technology and Organization (METEOR).
    9. S. Erbaş & Chera Sayers, 2001. "Can a Shorter Workweek Induce Higher Employment? Mandatory Reductions in the Workweek and Employment Subsidies," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 8(4), pages 485-509, August.
    10. Lars Calmfors & Giancarlo Corsetti & Seppo Honkapohja & John Kay & Willi Leibfritz & Gilles Saint-Paul & Hans-Werner Sinn & Xavier Vives, 2005. "Chapter 3: Longer Working Hours - the Beginning of a new Trend?," EEAG Report on the European Economy, CESifo, vol. 0, pages 51-68, March.
    11. Wehke, Sven, 2009. "Union wages, hours of work and the effectiveness of partial coordination agreements," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 89-96, January.
    12. Dur, Robert A. J., 2001. "Explaining unemployment trends in the Netherlands," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 161-168, February.
    13. Regt E de, 1999. "Wage Bargaining, Working Time and Unemployment," Research Memorandum 006, Maastricht University, Maastricht Research School of Economics of Technology and Organization (METEOR).
    14. Ángel Luis Martin Roman & Alfonso Moral de Blas, 2002. "Efectos de las variaciones en el tiempo de trabajo sobre la ocupación adolescente y juvenil en el sector industrial: un análisis regional," Revista de Estudios Regionales, Universidades Públicas de Andalucía, vol. 1, pages 51-77.
    15. David M. Gray, 2002. "Early Retirement Programs and Wage Restraint: Empirical Evidence from France," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 55(3), pages 512-532, April.
    16. Chen Yu-Fu & Funke Michael, 2004. "Working Time and Employment Under Uncertainty," Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 8(3), pages 1-23, September.
    17. FitzRoy, Felix R. & Funke, Michael & Nolan, Michael A., 2002. "Working time, taxation and unemployment in general equilibrium," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 333-344, June.
    18. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/1950 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Goerke, Laszlo & Hillesheim, Inga, 2013. "Relative consumption, working time, and trade unions," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 170-179.
    20. Mattesini, F. & Quintieri, B., 2006. "Does a reduction in the length of the working week reduce unemployment? Some evidence from the Italian economy during the Great Depression," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 43(3), pages 413-437, July.
    21. Chun-chieh Huang & Ching-chong Lai & Juin-jen Chang, 2004. "Working Hours Reduction and Endogenous Growth," IEAS Working Paper : academic research 04-A006, Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand

    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:oup:qjecon:v:114:y:1999:i:1:p:117-148.. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/qje .

    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.