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Working Time, Employment, and Work Sharing: Evidence from Sweden

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  • Jacobson, Tor

    (Department of Economic Statistics)

  • Ohlsson, Henry

    (Department of Economics)

Abstract

We study three necessary conditions for work sharing to increase employment. First, there must exist a negative long-run relation between working time and employment. Second, hours per worker must be exogenous with respect to wages and employment. Third, policy makers must be able to influence actual hours per worker. We formulate a theoretical model for employment, hours peer worker, production, and real wages. A VAR system with cointegrating constraints is estimated by maximum likelihood using Swedish private sector data 1970-1- 1990:4 We find (I) no long-run relation between hours per worker and employment, (II) that hours per worker are endogenous with respect to the estimation of long-run parameters, and (III) that legislated working time and hours per worker are related to each other in the long run.

Suggested Citation

  • Jacobson, Tor & Ohlsson, Henry, 1996. "Working Time, Employment, and Work Sharing: Evidence from Sweden," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 135, Stockholm School of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:hastef:0135
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    3. 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.
    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.
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    Cited by:

    1. Henry Ohlsson & Michael Lundholm, 1998. "Wages, taxes and publicly provided day care," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 11(2), pages 185-204.
    2. Lonnie Golden & Stuart Glosser, 2013. "Work sharing as a potential policy tool for creating more and better employment: A review of the evidence," Chapters, in: Jon C. Messenger & Naj Ghosheh (ed.), Work Sharing during the Great Recession, chapter 7, pages 203-258, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    3. Fang, Tony & Lin, Carl & Tang, Xueli, 2018. "How Has the Two-Day Weekend Policy Affected Labour Supply and Household Work in China?," IZA Discussion Papers 11698, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. M. J. Andrews & T. Schank & R. Simmons, 2005. "Does Worksharing Work? Some Empirical Evidence From The Iab‐Establishment Panel," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 52(2), pages 141-176, May.
    5. Kapteyn, Arie & Kalwij, Adriaan & Zaidi, Asghar, 2004. "The myth of worksharing," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 293-313, June.
    6. de Regt, E.R., 2004. "Hourly wages and working time in the Dutch market sector 1962-1995," Research Memorandum 028, Maastricht University, Maastricht Research School of Economics of Technology and Organization (METEOR).
    7. Philippe Askenazy, 2013. "Working time regulation in France from 1996 to 2012," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 37(2), pages 323-347.
    8. Akram,Q.F. & Nymoen,R., 2001. "Employment behaviour in slack and tight labour markets," Memorandum 27/2001, Oslo University, Department of Economics.
    9. Stuart Glosser & Lonnie Golden, 2005. "Is labour becoming more or less flexible? Changing dynamic behaviour and asymmetries of labour input in US manufacturing," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 29(4), pages 535-557, July.
    10. 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.
    11. Akram, Q. Farooq & Nymoen, Ragnar, 2006. "Econometric modelling of slack and tight labour markets," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 23(4), pages 579-596, July.
    12. Petri Böckerman & Jaakko Kiander, 2002. "Determination of Average Working Time in Finland," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 16(3), pages 557-568, September.
    13. Fang, Tony & Lin, Carl & Tang, Xueli, 2024. "Where did the time go? The effects of China's two-day weekend policy on labor supply, household work, and wages," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    14. Skans, Oskar Nordstrom, 2004. "The impact of working-time reductions on actual hours and wages: evidence from Swedish register-data," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(5), pages 647-665, October.
    15. Arvind Ashta, 2017. "Work-sharing from Different Angles: A literature review," Working Papers CEB 17-033, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    16. Rocheteau, Guillaume, 2002. "Working time regulation in a search economy with worker moral hazard," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(3), pages 387-425, June.
    17. Altavilla, Carlo & Garofalo, Antonio & Vinci, Concetto Paolo, 2005. "Evaluating the effects of working hours on employment and wages," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 27(6), pages 647-664, September.
    18. Erik de Regt, 2009. "Hourly wages and working time in the Dutch market sector 1962-1995," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(6), pages 765-778.
    19. Waqqas Qayyum, 2007. "Causes of Youth Unemployment in Pakistan," The Pakistan Development Review, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, vol. 46(4), pages 611-621.
    20. Chang, Juin-jen & Huang, Chun-chieh & Lai, Ching-chong, 2007. "Working hours reduction and wage contracting style in a dynamic model with labor adjustment costs," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 971-993, March.
    21. Simmons, R. & Schank, Thorsten & Andrews, Martyn J., 2004. "Does Worksharing Work? Some Empirical Evidence from the IAB Panel," Discussion Papers 25, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Chair of Labour and Regional Economics.
    22. 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.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Work sharing; maximum likelihood cointegration; employment; hours per worker; real wages;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
    • J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand

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