
- A gift of time
- Kawaguchi, Daiji; Lee, Jungmin; Hamermesh, Daniel S.
- National Bureau of Economic Research
Title |
A gift of time
Similar Titles
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Material Type | Report |
Author(English) |
Kawaguchi, Daiji; Lee, Jungmin; Hamermesh, Daniel S. |
Publisher |
Cambridge : National Bureau of Economic Research |
Date | 2012-12 |
Series Title; No | NBER Working Paper Series |
Pages | 40 |
Subject Country | South Korea(Asia and Pacific) |
Language | English |
File Type | Link |
Original Format | |
Subject | Social Development < Employment |
Holding | National Bureau of Economic Research |
License | ![]() |
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. We estimate the probability that an individual was affected by the reform and relate it to changes in time use based on time diaries. Reduced-form estimates show that the direct effect on a newly-constrained worker was a substantial reduction in market time, with the freed-up time in Japan reallocated to leisure, but in Korea also 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.