Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/62509
Year of Publication: 
2012
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 6700
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
How would people spend time if confronted by permanent declines in market work? We identify preferences off exogenous cuts in legislated standard hours that raised employers' overtime costs in Japan around 1990 and Korea in the early 2000s. Using time-diaries from before and after these shocks, we estimate the probability that an individual would have been affected by the reform. Reduced-form estimates show that the direct effect on a newly-constrained worker was a substantial reduction in market time, with the free-up time in Japan reallocated to leisure and personal maintenance, while in Korea the results are mixed, showing some impact on household production. Simulations using GMM estimates of a Stone-Geary utility function defined over time use suggest no effect on household production in either country. Estimation of a household model shows only slight evidence that spouses shared the time gift, nor that one spouse's allocation of non-market time changed when the other spouse's market work was permanently and exogenously reduced.
Subjects: 
time use
household production
freedom from work
household bargaining
JEL: 
J22
D13
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
830.52 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.