Worktime Regulations and Spousal Labour Supply

We investigate spillovers in spousal labour supply exploiting independent variation in hoursworked generated by the introduction of the shorter workweek in France in the late 1990s.We find that female and male employees treated by the shorter legal workweek reduce theirweekly labour supply by about 2 hours, and do not experience any reduction in their monthlyearnings. While wives of treated men do not seem to adjust their working time at either theintensive or extensive margins, husbands of treated wives respond by cutting their workweekby about half an hour to one hour, according to specifications and samples. In particular,managers and professionals respond much more strongly to the shorter legal workweek intheir wives’ firms than men in lower occupations. These effects are consistent with thepresence of significant cross-hour effects on labour supply for husbands, though not forwives....