Employed 40 Hours or Not Employed 39: Lessons from the 1982 Mandatory Reduction of the Workweek
By Bruno Crépon, Francis Kramarz. Journal of Political Economy, 2002
138 citations recorded by the source corpus.
We investigate the effects of the February 1, 1982, mandatory reduction of weekly working hours in France. Just after François Mitterrand’s election in 1981, the minimum wage was increased by 5 percent. The workweek was then reduced from 40 to 39 hours. At the same time, stable monthly earnings for minimum‐wage earners were mandated. We show that workers employed 40 hours and above in March 1981 were more likely to lose their jobs between 1981 and 1982 than workers employed 36–39 hours in March 1981. Moreover, many workers were still working 40 hours after February. These workers were also strongly affected by this reduction. Our estimates of the impact of this one‐hour reduction on employment losses vary between 2 percent and 4 percent. Minimum‐wage workers were most affected by the changes.
Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Gender Studies, General Health Professions
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a06b0140e33f1ccaa62b1f3adc86a2a6277dcbc4
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In Economics and Econometrics
- Antoinette Schoar
- David Thesmar
- Emilio J. Domínguez Irastorza
- Miren Ullibarri Arce
- Idoia Zabaleta Arregui
- Marianne Bertrand
- Julian Atanassov
- Belén Villalonga
In Gender Studies
In General Health Professions
Citations in the corpus
- Banking Deregulation and Industry Structure: Evidence from the French Banking Reforms of 1985 (2007, background): “…turn to an analysis of the effects of the banking reform on the rate of asset and job reallocation at the industry level, as well as on the concentration of 28 In 1981, the socialist government increased the minimum wage by 5% and reduced the working week to 39 hours (Crépon and Kramarz (2002)).”
- Effects of a reduction of working hours on a model with job creation and job destruction (2007, background): “Other studies, Hunt (1999) for Germany, Crépon and Kramarz (2002) with French data, Skans (2004) for Sweden and Kramarz et al (2006) for several European countries, analyze the empirical consequences of the work time reduction, that have taken place in the last years.”