IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fme/wpaper/71.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Paying for ideal discretion: a framed field experiment on working time arrangements

Author

Listed:
  • Magdalena Smyk

    (Group for Research in Applied Economics (GRAPE))

  • Lucas van der Velde

    (Group for Research in Applied Economics (GRAPE)
    Warsaw School Economics)

  • Joanna Tyrowicz

    (Group for Research in Applied Economics (GRAPE)
    University of Warsaw
    Institute of Labor Economics (IZA))

Abstract

The notion of ideal worker necessitates being available at the discretion of the employer in terms of time. By contrast, the ability to set one's own schedule is widely considered a cornerstone of work-life balance and job satisfaction. We provide causal evidence on the pecuniary and social valuation of the discretion to decide about working schedules. We embed our study in the context of gender and compare employee-initiated and employer-initiated request for a change towards more discretion over working hours. We show that employer-initiated availability should be reflected in higher wages, but the premium is small. There appears to be no penalty to employee-initiated request for autonomy to decide about working schedules. While our results lend support to the ideal worker model, they cast doubt on explanations linking gender wage inequality to labor market flexibility.

Suggested Citation

  • Magdalena Smyk & Lucas van der Velde & Joanna Tyrowicz, 2022. "Paying for ideal discretion: a framed field experiment on working time arrangements," GRAPE Working Papers 71, GRAPE Group for Research in Applied Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:fme:wpaper:71
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://grape.org.pl/WP/71_SmykVanderVeldeTyrowicz_website.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    gender inequality; flexibility penalty;

    JEL classification:

    • J32 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Nonwage Labor Costs and Benefits; Retirement Plans; Private Pensions
    • J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination

    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:fme:wpaper:71. 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: Jan Hagemejer (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/grauwpl.html .

    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.