IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/zbw/espost/68492.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Overtime Work as a Signaling Device

Author

Listed:
  • Anger, Silke

Abstract

This paper provides an explanation for the empirically proven relationship between overtime and future benefits. We suggest an internal signaling model, in which a worker signals his value to the employer by supplying unpaid overtime. In our empirical analysis, we examine whether overtime has in fact a signaling component. Variations in collectively bargained hours between industries are exploited, as they imply different overtime thresholds for workers with the same number of actual hours. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study for the years 1993–2004, a positive signaling value of unpaid overtime is found for West German workers.

Suggested Citation

  • Anger, Silke, 2008. "Overtime Work as a Signaling Device," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 55(2), pages 167-189.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:espost:68492
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/68492/1/Anger_2008_Overtime-Work-Signaling.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. John H. Tyler & Richard J. Murnane & John B. Willett, 2000. "Estimating the Labor Market Signaling Value of the GED," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 115(2), pages 431-468.
    3. Engellandt, Axel & Riphahn, Regina T., 2005. "Temporary contracts and employee effort," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 281-299, June.
    4. David Campbell & Francis Green, 2002. "The Long Term Pay-Off From Working Longer Hours," Studies in Economics 0205, School of Economics, University of Kent.
    5. Meyer, Anna & Wallette, Mårten, 2005. "Absence of Absenteeism and Overtime work – Signaling Factors for Temporary Workers?," Working Papers 2005:15, Lund University, Department of Economics.
    6. Silke Anger, 2005. "Working Time as an Investment?: The Effects of Unpaid Overtime on Wages, Promotions, and Layoffs," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 535, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    7. Meyer, Bruce D, 1995. "Natural and Quasi-experiments in Economics," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 13(2), pages 151-161, April.
    8. Massimiliano Bratti & Stefano Staffolani, 2007. "Effort‐based career opportunities and working time," International Journal of Manpower, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 28(6), pages 489-512, September.
    9. Sousa-Poza, Alfonso & Ziegler, Alexandre, 2003. "Asymmetric information about workers' productivity as a cause for inefficient long working hours," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(6), pages 727-747, December.
    10. Booth, Alison L. & Francesconi, Marco & Frank, Jeff, 2003. "A sticky floors model of promotion, pay, and gender," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 295-322, April.
    11. Bell, David N.F. & Hart, Robert A., 2003. "How Important Is Guaranteed or Institutionalised Overtime?," IZA Discussion Papers 766, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Michael Spence, 1973. "Job Market Signaling," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 87(3), pages 355-374.
    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. Alexis Ioannides & Eleni Oxouzi & Stavros Mavroudeas, 2014. "All work and no … pay? Unpaid overtime in Greece: determining factors and theoretical explanations," Industrial Relations Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(1), pages 39-55, January.
    2. Mario Bossler & Philipp Grunau, 2020. "Asymmetric information in external versus internal promotions," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 59(6), pages 2977-2998, December.
    3. Frei, Irina & Grund, Christian, 2017. "Antecedents of Overtime Work: The Case of Junior Academics," IZA Discussion Papers 11065, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Mevlut Tatliyer & Nurullah Gur, 2022. "Individualism and Working Hours: Macro-Level Evidence," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 159(2), pages 733-755, January.
    5. Imanol Nunez & Ilias Livanos, 2015. "Temps “by choice”? An Investigation of the Reasons Behind Temporary Employment Among Young Workers in Europe," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 36(1), pages 44-66, March.
    6. Dawson Chris & Veliziotis Michail & Hopkins Benjamin, 2014. "Assimilation of the migrant work ethic," Working Papers 20141407, Department of Accounting, Economics and Finance, Bristol Business School, University of the West of England, Bristol.
    7. Melissa Clark & David Jaeger, 2006. "Natives, the foreign-born and high school equivalents: new evidence on the returns to the GED," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 19(4), pages 769-793, October.
    8. Shaun M. Dougherty, 2018. "The Effect of Career and Technical Education on Human Capital Accumulation: Causal Evidence from Massachusetts," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 13(2), pages 119-148, Spring.
    9. Anger, Silke, 2005. "Unpaid Overtime in Germany: Differences between East and West," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 125(1), pages 17-27.
    10. Ghaffarzadegan, Navid & Xue, Yi & Larson, Richard C., 2017. "Work-education mismatch: An endogenous theory of professionalization," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 261(3), pages 1085-1097.
    11. Il-Horn Hann & Jeffrey A. Roberts & Sandra A. Slaughter, 2013. "All Are Not Equal: An Examination of the Economic Returns to Different Forms of Participation in Open Source Software Communities," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 24(3), pages 520-538, September.
    12. Piopiunik, Marc & Schwerdt, Guido & Simon, Lisa & Woessmann, Ludger, 2020. "Skills, signals, and employability: An experimental investigation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).
    13. Katherine Caves & Simone Balestra, 2018. "The impact of high school exit exams on graduation rates and achievement," The Journal of Educational Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 111(2), pages 186-200, March.
    14. John H. Tyler & Jeffrey R. Kling, 2004. "Prison-Based Education and Re-Entry into the Mainstream Labor Market," Working Papers 12, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    15. Feng, Andy & Graetz, Georg, 2017. "A question of degree: The effects of degree class on labor market outcomes," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 140-161.
    16. Chris Bidner, 2014. "A spillover-based theory of credentialism," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 47(4), pages 1387-1425, November.
    17. Tyler, John H. & Murnane, Richard J. & Willett, John B., 2003. "Who benefits from a GED? Evidence for females from High School and Beyond," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 237-247, June.
    18. Luis Santos-Pinto, 2011. "Labor Market Signaling and Self-Confidence: Wage Compression and the Gender Pay Gap N.B.: This paper replaces Nr 10.07 "Labor Market Signaling with Overconfident Workers" (June 2010)," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 11.07, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    19. Gaurab Aryal & Manudeep Bhuller & Fabian Lange, 2022. "Signaling and Employer Learning with Instruments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 112(5), pages 1669-1702, May.
    20. Thomas O. BRODATY & Robert J. GARY-BOBO & Ana PRIETO, 2009. "Does Speed Signal Ability , A Test of Spence's Theory," Working Papers 2009-02, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Unpaid Overtime; Internal Signaling; Asymmetric Information;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • J41 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Labor Contracts

    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:zbw:espost:68492. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/zbwkide.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.