Results

Journal article

Social Science and Medicine:

Do people get used to working long hours?

Overemployment - working more hours than desired - affects nearly one-third of European workers, yet its consequences remain understudied. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP, 1984-2019, N = 43,570) and...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Finding meaning at work

Helping employees assess their jobs through the lens of purpose increases productivity and narrows gender gaps in career choices...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The broken ladder: AI, remote work, and early-career hiring

Is generative AI replacing junior workers? A growing literature answers yes, citing large declines in early-career hiring concentrated in GenAI-exposed occupations. We argue that this verdict is premature because GenAI e...Read more...

Chapter

Advancing gender equality in parenting: the remaining challenge

in The Routledge International Handbook of Time Use Themes and Applications

The roles of men and women in the labour market have been converging in recent decades, but studies have shown that women are devoting more time to childcare, widening the gender gap in this area. Using data from the UK ...Read more...

Blog

Transform work:

Transform work with Raffaella Sadun, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School (podcast)

Raffaella's work sits at the intersection of economics, leadership, and the future of work. Drawing on large-scale data and real-world field experiments inside major companies, she explores how hybrid work is reshaping l...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Minimum wages and the nature of work

When minimum wage increases impose a cost shock on employers of low wage workers, there are a variety of ways in which firms can adjust. Rather than study the main focal point of much minimum wage research, possible labo...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Helping employees find 'meaning' improves performance and narrows gender gaps

A common way to boost employee motivation is to provide monetary incentives linked to a firm's goals. Oriana Bandiera finds that a different approach to motivation, which encourages employees to reassess their roles thro...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy:

The making of civic virtues: a school-based experiment in three countries

This paper shows that schools can foster the transmission of civic virtues by helping students to develop concrete, democratically chosen, collective projects. We draw on a RCT implemented in 200 middle schools in three ...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Fully remote work expands recruitment and boosts productivity

The Covid-19 pandemic sparked a large and lasting shift to remote work. This column draws on detailed administrative data from a major call centre in Turkiye to show that a permanent shift to fully remote work can expand...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Working from home boosted growth by expanding disability employment

Individuals with a disability have remarkably low employment rates compared to the rest of the population. This column examines whether the rapid rise in the ability to work from home post-pandemic has improved disabilit...Read more...

Journal article

Psychological Medicine :

Cost-benefit of IAPT Norway and effects on work-related outcomes and health care utilization: results from a randomized controlled trial using registry-based data

Data from an RCT of IAPT Norway (?Prompt Mental Health Care? [PMHC]) were linked to several administrative registers up to five years following the intervention. The aims were to (1) examine the effects of PMHC compared ...Read more...

Journal article

PNAS:

How working from home reshapes cities

In recent decades, economic activity has become increasingly concentrated in major global metropolises. Yet, the rise of working from home threatens this dominance of cities. Using multiple high-frequency datasets on spe...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

Has work from home shifted the US electoral map?

Since 2020, the dramatic rise in remote work has coincided with increased geographic mobility in the United States. We examine the relationship between these trends and their effects on the electoral landscape. Using IRS...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Why do flexible work arrangements exist?

This paper studies flexible work arrangements, with a focus on zero-hours contracts (ZHCs). Leveraging a unique dataset from a large UK firm in the low-pay sector, it provides novel descriptives on ZHC workers, as well a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Online versus in-person services: effects on patients and providers

Online delivery of one-to-one services offers potential cost savings and increased convenience, yet relatively little is known about its impacts on providers and consumers. This paper studies the online delivery of healt...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The wage of temporary agency workers

Using French administrative data, we estimate the wage gap distribution between in-house and temporary agency workers working in the same establishment and the same occupation. The average wage gap is about 3%, but the g...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Gendered change: 150 years of transformation in US hours

Women's contribution to the economy has been markedly underestimated in predominantly agricultural societies, due to their widespread involvement in unpaid agricultural work. Combining data from the US Census and several...Read more...

Journal article

Research in Labor Economics:

Effort at work and worker well-being

This chapter analyzes detailed 24-hour diary data from the United States to provide evidence on the relationship between workers? effort and well-being while at work. In doing so, we first measure workers? effort in term...Read more...

Blog

Hoover Institution:

Work from Home and Productivity - A Conversation with Nick Bloom (Podcast)

Steven Davis and Nick Bloom discuss the big shift to work from home, what it means for productivity, why perceptions in this regard often differ between managers and workers, and why - on balance - the big shift is a ble...Read more...

Journal article

Annual Review of Economics:

Labor market insurance policies in the Twenty-First Century

The COVID-19 crisis was a stress test for unemployment insurance schemes as it involved a sudden and unexpected shutdown of a very large set of activities. This forced countries to introduce, often from scratch, income s...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Should we call time on presenteeism?

Many companies have adopted a "remote first" approach for their workforce, but a growing number of firms are now demanding that employees work from the office most of the time. Jasmine Virhia and Grace Lordan warn firms ...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

UTOPIA and the City: the future of work in financial and professional services

In the midst of a reorganisation of work caused by the pandemic, there is no one-size-fits-all arrangement and employers are battling to find the right mix between office and home working. To learn more about how to get ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Labor market insurance policies in the XXI century

The recovery from the Covid-19 crisis will force governments to accelerate transformation in their menu of labor market policy tools. The crisis was a stress test for unemployment insurance schemes as it involved a sudde...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Human Resources :

Workplace presenteeism, job substitutability and gender inequality

This paper explores how the parenthood wage penalty is partially explained by an increased within-couple gap in job uniqueness (i.e., the within-establishment substitutability of workers). Uniqueness is rewarded with hig...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Operations Management:

Working from home and firm resilience to the Covid-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted firms' operations. To cope with the crisis, many firms have allowed their employees to work from home (WFH). We examine whether a firm's WFH capacity has increased its resilience durin...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Low pay and insecurity in the UK labour market

Minimum wage increases have driven down the incidence of low hourly pay, but there has been much less progress elsewhere for low earners. Low pay is widespread among the self-employed, who do not benefit from the minimum...Read more...

Journal article

Mothers in the Labor Market:

Temporal flexibility, breaks at work, and the motherhood wage gap

We analyze the relationship between temporal flexibility at work (i.e., the ability to vary or change the time of beginning or ending work) and the motherhood wage gap of working parents, in the US. To that end, we first...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Teleworking is here to stay and may raise productivity if implemented appropriately

The pandemic triggered a surge in teleworking, raising questions about its persistence as well as its impact on firm performance and worker wellbeing. This column argues that teleworking is here to stay - for most worker...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Economists discuss the impact of working from home on productivity, job satisfaction, and women's career progression

The pandemic has led to a big shift to working from home among people in occupations where it is possible for the jobs or some part of them to be done remotely. There has been much debate about the extent to which such f...Read more...

Blog

What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:

What are the local implications of working from home?

Helene Donnat summarises the discussion of the What Works Growth's fourth Economic Recovery workshop, which discussed working from home: whether the trend is likely to persist and how it will affect workers - both in off...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Covid-19 and structural change

Covid-19 has had a sizeable impact on where people work and how they shop. This column uses data from the Decision Maker Panel business survey of 3,000 UK firms to assess the longer-run impact. The pandemic is expected t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Living wages and age discontinuities for low-wage workers

This paper considers an emerging, highly policy relevant feature of minimum wages, studying what happens when a wage floor significantly higher than a nationally legislated minimum is imposed. The consequences of age-wag...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

Generation COVID: emerging work and education inequalities

The purpose of this brief paper is to present initial findings from the recently collected LSE-CEP Social Mobility survey, which was undertaken as part of our UKRI project `Generation COVID and Social Mobility: Evidence ...Read more...

Journal article

Labour Economics:

Gender norms, fairness and relative working hours within households

Using data in the United States, UK and Germany, we show that women whose working hours exceed those of their male partners report lower life satisfaction on average. By contrast, men do not report lower life satisfactio...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Covid-19 and the work patterns of men and women

Claudia Hupkau and Barbara Petrongolo explore the impact of the pandemic on women's labour market prospects and `home production' responsibilities...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Health Economics:

Child sleep and mother labour market outcomes

We show that sleep deprivation exerts strong negative effects on mothers? labour market performance. To isolate variations in maternal sleep, we exploit unique variations in child sleep disruption using a UK panel datase...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The gig economy and workers' preferences for steady jobs

Is the rise of gig work, freelancing, zero hours contracts and self-employment a result of people wanting such work or because they have no other choice? Nikhil Datta finds that while workers in the gig economy may like ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Willing to pay for security: a discrete choice experiment to analyse labour supply preferences

This paper investigates the extent to which labour supply preferences are responsible for the marked rise in atypical work arrangements in the UK and US. By employing vignettes in a discrete job choice experiment in a re...Read more...

Journal article

Economic Policy:

Zero hours contracts and labour market policy

The evolving nature of atypical work arrangements is studied. A particular focus is placed on one such form of work relation: zero hour contracts (ZHCs). The paper uses existing secondary data and new survey data collect...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Subsidizing labor hoarding in recessions: the employment and welfare effects of short time work

The Great Recession has seen a revival of interest in policies encouraging labor hoarding by firms. Short time work (STW) policies, which consist in offering subsidies for hours reductions to workers in firms experiencin...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Economics of a good night's sleep

Parents whose sleep quality is reduced by young children waking them in the night are less likely to work, work shorter hours and/or earn less than otherwise similar people who enjoy a good night?s sleep. The negative la...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Parental sleep and employment: evidence from a British cohort study

We show that sleep deprivation exerts a strong negative effect on labour market performance. We exploit variations in child sleep quality to instrument for parental sleep quality. A one-hour reduction in sleep duration s...Read more...

Journal article

IZA Journal of Labor & Development:

Pathways from school to work in the developing world

This paper uses novel micro data from the ILO-STWT surveys to provide evidence on the duration, endpoint, and determinants of the transition from school to work in a sample of 23 low- and middle-income countries around t...Read more...

Journal article

IZA Journal of Labor and Development:

Pathways from school to work in the developing world

This paper uses novel micro data from the ILO-STWT surveys to provide evidence on the duration, endpoint, and determinants of the transition from school to work in a sample of 23 low- and middle-income countries around t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The loss of production work: evidence from quasi-experimental identification of labour demand functions

This paper examines changes in the structure of labour demand in plant-level panel data. I exploit variation in wages across local labour markets induced by the collapse of Finland?s Soviet-dependent industry in the earl...Read more...

Journal article

Journal for Labour Market Research:

The future of the German industrial relations model [Die Zukunft des deutschen Modells der Arbeitsbeziehungen]

The paper examines recent evidence on the erosion of the German industrial relations model. Although its coverage has declined, much of this has occurred in smaller and newer establishments, and compared with Britain, it...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Evaluating the impact of Sunday trading deregulation

During the past few decades a number of European countries lifted the regulations that restricted the opening hours of shops on Sunday. In this paper we examine the impact of Sunday trade deregulation on employment, expe...Read more...

Blog

LSE American Politics and Policy Blog:

Firms with more structured management practices are more productive, innovative and have faster employment growth.

In 2010, the US Census Bureau conducted the first large-scale survey of management practices in America, gathering data on more than 30,000 manufacturing plants. Nicholas Bloom and colleagues find strong links between es...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Are you happy while you work?

Happiness surveys typically ask people to say how they feel about their life experiences in retrospect, but smartphone technology makes it possible to collect responses on wellbeing 'in the moment'. The authors use this ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Concentration versus re-matching? Evidence about the locational effects of commuting costs

Using administrative employer-employee data from Germany, I exploit two reductions of tax breaks for commuting in 2003/4 and 2006/7 to estimate commuting costs? effect on the decision to switch job and move house. Standa...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Are You Happy While You Work?

Recent work in psychology and economics has investigated ways in which individuals experience their lives. This literature includes influences on individuals? momentary happiness. We contribute to this literature using a...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Immigration and the UK labour market

David Metcalf, chair of the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), outlines recent changes in the regulatory framework for immigrant workers....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does High Involvement Management Improve Worker Wellbeing?

Employees exposed to high involvement management (HIM) practices have higher subjective wellbeing, fewer accidents but more short absence spells than ?like? employees not exposed to HIM. These results are robust to exten...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does High Involvement Management Lead to Higher Pay?

Using nationally representative survey data for Finnish employees linked to register data on their wages and work histories we find wage effects of high involvement management (HIM) practices are generally positive and s...Read more...

Government consultation

Department for Work and Pensions - 21st century welfare

Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Welfare Policy and the Distribution of Hours of Work

We examine the distribution of hours of work across industrial sectors in OECD countries. We find large disparities when sectors are divided into three groups: one that produces goods without home substitutes and two oth...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Can Family-Support Policies Help Explain Differences in Working Hours Across Countries?

It has been suggested in the literature that taxes and subsidies play an important role in explaining the differences in working hours across countries. In this paper I test whether public programmes for family support p...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Unemployment Insurance and Cultural Transmission: Theory and Application to European Unemployment

This paper emphasizes the two-way causality between the provision of unemployment insurance and the cultural transmission of work ethic. Values affect the size of the moral-hazard problem and, hence, the policy to be imp...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

The part-time pay penalty for women in Britain

Women in Britain who work part-time have, on average, hourly earnings about 25% less than that of women working full-time. This gap has widened greatly over the past 30 years. This article tries to explain this part-time...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Unemployment and Hours of Work: The North Atlantic Divide Revisited

I examine the dynamic evolutions of unemployment, hours of work and the service share since the war in the United States and Europe. The theoretical model brings together all three and emphasizes technological growth. Co...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trends in Hours and Economic Growth

We study long-run trends in market hours of work and employment shifts across economic sectors driven by uneven TFP growth in market and home production. We focus on the structural transformation between agriculture, man...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Patterns of Work Across the OECD

Market work per person of working age differs widely across the OECD countries and there have been some significant changes in the last forty years. How to explain this pattern? Taxes are part of the story but much remai...Read more...

CEP report

Work-Life Balance, Management Practices and Productivity

Do ?Anglo-Saxon? management practices generate higher productivity only at the expense of lousy work-life balance (WLB) for workers? Many critics of ?neo-liberalisme sauvage? have argued that increased competition from g...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Apprenticeship in Europe: 'Fading' or Flourishing?

This paper sets out the extent and defining characteristics of apprenticeship in Europe. Apprenticeship is then situated within the wider context of European provision for education and training of 16-19 year olds and a ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Part-Time Pay Penalty

In 2003, women working part-time in the UK earned, on average, 22% less than women working full-time. Compared to women who work FT, PT women are more likely to have low levels of education, to be in a couple, to have yo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Catching a Wave: the Adoption of Voice and High Commitment Workplace Practices in Britain: 1984-1998

In this paper we treat workplace voice and systems of high-commitment human resource management (HCHRM) as technological innovations in order to account for the uneven diffusion patterns observed across establishments. U...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Sinking the Blues: the Impact of Shop Closing Hours on Labor and Product Markets

There is a growing consensus among economists that extending shop opening hours creates jobs. While this is probably true in deregulating industries, this paper argues there are some deficiencies in the existing hypothes...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Can a Work Organization Have An Attitude Problem? The Impact of Workplaces on Employee Attitude and Economic Outcomes

In this study we examine whether a workplace can induce good or bad attitudes among its employees and whether any such ?workplace attitudes? affect economic outcomes. This study analyzes responses of thousands of employe...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Reconciling Workless Measures at the Individual and Household Level: Theory and Evidence from the United States, Britain, Germany, Spain and Australia

Individual and household based aggregate measures of worklessness can, and do, offer conflicting signals about labour market performance. We outline a means of quantifying the extent of any disparity, (polarisation), in ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Two Sides to Every Story: Measuring the Polarisation of Work

Individual and household based aggregate measures of joblessness can, and do, offer conflicting signals about labour market performance if work is unequally distributed. This paper introduces a simple set of indices that...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Employment After Motherhood: A European Comparison

There is theoretical evidence that economic and family policies have an important impact on mother's employment. The aim of this article is to study empirically the women's transitions from employment to non-employment...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Cross-Generation Correlations of Union Status For Young People in Britain

In this paper we investigate whether young people whose fathers are union members are themselves more likely to join a union. The work builds upon a large social science literature on intergenerational mobility that, to ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Hidden Costs of Fixed Term Contracts: the Impact On Work Accidents

This paper assesses whether there is a systematic difference between the accident rates of fixed term and permanent contract workers that is not just the result of a compositional effect. A pure contractual effect might ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Working on the Chain Gang? An Examination of Rising Effort Levels in Europe in the 1990s

This paper presents evidence that, across many European countries, the 1990s have witnessed an intensification of labour effort, and investigates explanations for this process. Using data drawn from The European Survey o...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Impact of Work Experience and Training in the Current and Previous Occupations on Earnings: Micro Evidence from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth

In the empirical literature on work experience, job tenure, training and earnings, only one previous study has made a distinction between the effects of work experience in the current occupation and work experience in pr...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Teachers Before the 'Threshold'

During the summer of 2000, the government will introduce a new system of pay and performance management for teachers. The Centre for Economic Performance is conducting a 'before-and-after' panel study of teachers and s...Read more...