On their intensive margins, firms in the British engineering industry adjusted to the severe falls in demand during the 1930s Depression by cutting hours of work. This provided an important means of reducing labour input and marginal labour costs, through movements from overtime to short-time...

Labor market responses to temporary aggregate demand shocks are commonly analyzed and discussed in terms of changes in employment and unemployment. However, it can be seriously misleading to ignore the interrelated behavior of hours worked.Work hours can be altered relatively speedily and...

The responses of working hours and employment levels to temporary negative demand shocks like those caused by the Great Recession in 2007-2008 and the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020-2022 have shown that consideration of both is important. Workers' desired rises in working hours in times of recession...

We investigate wage-hours contracts within a four-period rent sharing model that incorporates asymmetric information. Distinctions are made among (a) an investment period, (b) a period in which the parties may separate (quits or layoffs) or continue rent accumulation and sharing, (c) a post...

We show in this paper that important insights into the cyclical behaviour of wages can be gained by dividing (real) average hourly earnings into their straight-time hourly wage and overtime components. Our motivation is based on the idea of employment-contingent contracts. BLS published and...