IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/crm/wpaper/26071.html

The Effects of the Legal Minimum Working Time on Workers, Firms and the Labor Market

Author

Listed:
  • Pauline Carry

Abstract

This paper examines the effects of working time regulations on the allocation of workers and hours. I exploit a unique reform introducing a minimum workweek of 24 hours in France in 2014, affecting 15% of jobs. Drawing on administrative data and an event study design, I find a firm-level reduction in total hours worked, showing imperfect substitutability between workers and hours. The effects differ by gender: women working part-time were replaced by men working longer hours. Importantly, workers also reallocate between firms. To quantify the aggregate impact accounting for these effects, I build and estimate a search and matching model with firm and worker heterogeneity. Overall, the minimum workweek reduced employment by 1.4%, largely driven by women, and decreased total hours by 0.5%.

Suggested Citation

  • Pauline Carry, 2026. "The Effects of the Legal Minimum Working Time on Workers, Firms and the Labor Market," RFBerlin Discussion Paper Series 26071, ROCKWOOL Foundation Berlin (RFBerlin).
    • Handle: RePEc:crm:wpaper:26071
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.rfberlin.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/26071.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J08 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics Policies
    • J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand
    • J41 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Labor Contracts
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity

    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:crm:wpaper:26071. 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: Moritz Lubczyk or Matthew Nibloe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cmucluk.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.