IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp3885.html

The Timing of Labor Demand

Author

Listed:
  • Cardoso, Ana Rute

    (IAE Barcelona (CSIC))

  • Hamermesh, Daniel S.

    (University of Texas at Austin)

  • Varejão, José

    (University of Porto)

Abstract

We examine the timing of firms' operations in a formal model of labor demand. Merging a variety of data sets from Portugal from 1995-2004, we describe temporal patterns of firms' demand for labor and estimate production-functions and relative labor-demand equations. The results demonstrate the existence of substitution of employment across times of the day/week and show that legislated penalties for work at irregular hours induce firms to alter their operating schedules. The results suggest a role for such penalties in an unregulated labor market, such as the United States, in which unusually large fractions of work are performed at night and on weekends.

Suggested Citation

  • Cardoso, Ana Rute & Hamermesh, Daniel S. & Varejão, José, 2008. "The Timing of Labor Demand," IZA Discussion Papers 3885, IZA Network @ LISER.
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp3885
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp3885.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. José Varejão & Pedro Portugal, 2007. "Employment Dynamics and the Structure of Labor Adjustment Costs," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 25(1), pages 137-165.
    2. Oi, Walter Y. & Idson, Todd L., 1999. "Firm size and wages," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 33, pages 2165-2214, Elsevier.
    3. Boeri, Tito & Burda, Michael & Kramarz, Francis (ed.), 2008. "Working Hours and Job Sharing in the EU and USA: Are Europeans Lazy? Or Americans Crazy?," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199231027.
    4. William Michelson & David Crouse, 2004. "Examining large-scale time-use files through graphic representation," electronic International Journal of Time Use Research, Research Institute on Professions (Forschungsinstitut Freie Berufe (FFB)) and The International Association for Time Use Research (IATUR), vol. 1(1), pages 85-100, August.
    5. Pedro Portugal & Ana Rute Cardoso, 2006. "Disentangling the Minimum Wage Puzzle: An Analysis of Worker Accessions and Separations," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 4(5), pages 988-1013, September.
    6. Kostiuk, Peter F, 1990. "Compensating Differentials for Shift Work," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(5), pages 1054-1075, October.
    7. Julia I. Lane & John C. Haltiwanger & James Spletzer, 1999. "Productivity Differences across Employers: The Roles of Employer Size, Age, and Human Capital," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(2), pages 94-98, May.
    8. Morrison, C. J. & Berndt, E. R., 1981. "Short-run labor productivity in a dynamic model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 339-365, August.
    9. Trejo, Stephen J, 1991. "The Effects of Overtime Pay Regulation on Worker Compensation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(4), pages 719-740, September.
    10. Burda, Michael C. & Hamermesh, Daniel S. & Weil, Philippe, 2006. "The Distribution of Total Work in the EU and US," IZA Discussion Papers 2270, IZA Network @ LISER.
    11. repec:bla:econom:v:60:y:1993:i:238:p:183-201 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Robert A Hart & Robin J Ruffell, 1992. "The Cost of Overtime Hours in British Production Industries," Working Papers Series 92/1, University of Stirling, Division of Economics.
    13. Hellerstein, Judith K & Neumark, David & Troske, Kenneth R, 1999. "Wages, Productivity, and Worker Characteristics: Evidence from Plant-Level Production Functions and Wage Equations," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 17(3), pages 409-446, July.
    14. Rosen, Sherwin, 1974. "Hedonic Prices and Implicit Markets: Product Differentiation in Pure Competition," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(1), pages 34-55, Jan.-Feb..
    15. Pedro Portugal & José Varejão, 2010. "The Hidden Side of Temporary Employment: Fixed-term Contracts as a Screening Device," Working Papers w201029, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.
    16. Daniel S. Hamermesh, 1993. "Labor Demand and the Source of Adjustment Costs," NBER Working Papers 4394, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Stephen Nickell, 2008. "Is the U.S. Labor Market Really That Exceptional? A Review of Richard Freeman," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 46(2), pages 384-395, June.
    18. Timothy F. Bresnahan & Valerie A. Ramey, 1994. "Output Fluctuations at the Plant Level," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(3), pages 593-624.
    19. Bound, John & Brown, Charles & Duncan, Greg J & Rodgers, Willard L, 1994. "Evidence on the Validity of Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Labor Market Data," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 12(3), pages 345-368, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Labanca, Claudio & Pozzoli, Dario, 2022. "Hours Constraints and Wage Differentials across Firms," IZA Discussion Papers 14992, IZA Network @ LISER.
    2. Daniel S. Hamermesh, 2016. "What'S To Know About Time Use?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(1), pages 198-203, February.
    3. German Cubas & Chinhui Juhn & Pedro Silos, 2023. "Coordinated Work Schedules and the Gender Wage Gap," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 133(651), pages 1036-1066.
    4. Labanca, Claudio & Pozzoli, Dario, 2018. "Coordination of Hours within the Firm," Working Papers 7-2018, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Economics.
    5. Freddy H. Castro & Ingrid Monroy, 2011. "Demanda laboral en la Banca Central: análisis de tendencias 2000-2009," Borradores de Economia 662, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    6. Phil Lewis, 2014. "Paying the Penalty? The High Price of Penalty Rates in Australian Restaurants," Agenda - A Journal of Policy Analysis and Reform, Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics, vol. 21(1), pages 5-26.
    7. Daniel S. Hamermesh, 2021. "Do labor costs affect companies’ demand for labor?," IZA World of Labor, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), pages 1-3, February.
    8. Serena Yu & David Peetz, 2019. "Non‐Standard Time Wage Premiums and Employment Effects: Evidence from an Australian Natural Experiment," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 57(1), pages 33-61, March.

    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. Hamermesh, Daniel S. & Kawaguchi, Daiji & Lee, Jungmin, 2017. "Does labor legislation benefit workers? Well-being after an hours reduction," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 1-12.
    2. Ngai, L. Rachel & Pissarides, Christopher A., 2009. "Welfare policy and the distribution of hours of work," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 28698, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Stephan Brunow & Georg Hirte, 2009. "The age pattern of human capital and regional productivity: A spatial econometric study on german regions," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 88(4), pages 799-823, November.
    4. Hamermesh, Daniel S., 1999. "LEEping into the future of labor economics: the research potential of linking employer and employee data," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(1), pages 25-41, March.
    5. repec:osf:socarx:ax6k7_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Garicano, Luis & Hubbard, Thomas N., 2005. "Hierarchical sorting and learning costs: Theory and evidence from the law," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 349-369, October.
    7. Pedro S. Martins, 2009. "Dismissals for Cause: The Difference That Just Eight Paragraphs Can Make," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 27(2), pages 257-279, April.
    8. Pietro Garibaldi & Espen Moen & Dag-Einar Sommervoll, 2016. "Competitive On-the-job Search," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 19, pages 88-107, January.
    9. Alexandre Mas & Amanda Pallais, 2017. "Valuing Alternative Work Arrangements," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(12), pages 3722-3759, December.
    10. Economides, George & Moutos, Thomas, 2017. "Minimum wages in the presence of in-kind redistribution," CEPIE Working Papers 08/17, Technische Universität Dresden, Center of Public and International Economics (CEPIE).
    11. François Rycx & Yves Saks & Ilan Tojerow, 2015. "Does Education Raise Productivity and Wages Equally? The Moderating Roles of Age, Gender and Industry," Working Paper Research 281, National Bank of Belgium.
    12. Thierry Lallemand & François Rycx, 2009. "Are Older Workers Harmful for Firm Productivity?," De Economist, Springer, vol. 157(3), pages 273-292, September.
    13. Dupaigne, Martial, 2001. "Capital utilization and work schedules: the welfare costs of shiftworking," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 195-200, November.
    14. Fang, Tony & Lee, Byron & Timming, Andrew R. & Fan, Di, 2019. "The Effects of Work-Life Benefits on Employment Outcomes in Canada: A Multivariate Analysis," IZA Discussion Papers 12322, IZA Network @ LISER.
    15. Hanan Nazier, 2019. "Estimating Labor Demand Elasticities and Elasticities of Substitution in Egyptian Manufacturing Sector: A Firm-Level Static Analysis," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 62(4), pages 549-575, December.
    16. Bell, David N.F. & Hart, Robert A., 2003. "How Important Is Guaranteed or Institutionalised Overtime?," IZA Discussion Papers 766, IZA Network @ LISER.
    17. Marcello Estevao, "undated". "Measurement Error and Time Aggregation: A Closer Look at Estimates of Output-Labor Elasticities," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 1996-02, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.), revised 04 Dec 2019.
    18. Fix, Blair, 2018. "The trouble with human capital theory," Working Papers on Capital as Power 2018/07, Capital As Power - Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism.
    19. Ana Cardoso & Paulo Guimarães & José Varejão, 2011. "Are Older Workers Worthy of Their Pay? An Empirical Investigation of Age-Productivity and Age-Wage Nexuses," De Economist, Springer, vol. 159(2), pages 95-111, June.
    20. Katharina Frosch, 2009. "Do only new brooms sweep clean? A review on workforce age and innovation," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2009-005, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    21. Fix, Blair, 2018. "The Trouble with Human Capital Theory," SocArXiv ax6k7, Center for Open Science.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand
    • J78 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Public Policy (including comparable worth)

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:iza:izadps:dp3885. 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: Mark Fallak (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaalu.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.