Hielke Buddelmeyer
- 29 February 2008
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 872Details
- Abstract
- This empirical paper seeks to determine the relative contribution of the business cycle and structural factors to the development of part-time employment in the EU-15 countries over the 1980s and 1990s, exploiting a panel of EU countries. In the short-run, the business cycle is found to exert a short-term negative effect on part-time employment developments, which is consistent with firms utilising part-time work to adjust their labour force to changing economic conditions. Institutions and other structural factors such as changes in legislation affecting part-time employment are found to be key drivers of the rate of part-time employment, significant in the longer run. Overall, although the role of individual factors differs in the 1980s and 1990s, a contribution analysis considering the most significant factors shows that the main structural and institutional variables generally well explain the development in the part-time employment rate in the EU countries, which is not the case in the United States.
- JEL Code
- J21 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Demand and Supply of Labor→Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure
J22 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Demand and Supply of Labor→Time Allocation and Labor Supply
J28 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Demand and Supply of Labor→Safety, Job Satisfaction, Related Public Policy
J68 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers→Public Policy
- 30 March 2005
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 460Details
- Abstract
- This paper looks at the role of part-time work in labour mobility for 11 European countries. We find some evidence of part-time work being used as a stepping stone into full-time employment, but for a small proportion of individuals (less than 5%). Part-time jobs are also found to be more frequently taken up as a means to enter the labour market than to leave it. Multinomial logit regression of the determinants of part-time work reveals household composition, past labour market history and country of residence as very important for both men and women in their decision to work part time. Random effects regression controlling for individual heterogeneity, and the comparison of results for Europe and the US, reveals that a significantly higher proportion of female workers in Europe prefer inactivity and a significantly lower percentage prefer full-time, over part-time employment, than in the US, with considerable variation across EU countries.
- JEL Code
- J21 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Demand and Supply of Labor→Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure
J22 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Demand and Supply of Labor→Time Allocation and Labor Supply
J16 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Demographic Economics→Economics of Gender, Non-labor Discrimination
J60 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers→General