Some surprising facts about working time accounts and the business cycle in Germany
Abstract
Purpose
Working time accounts (WTAs) allow firms to smooth hours worked over time. The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether this increase in flexibility has also affected how firms adjust employment in Germany over the business cycle.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper uses rich microeconomic panel data and fixed effects estimations to compare the employment adjustment of firms with and without WTAs.
Findings
The authors show that firms with WTAs show a similar separation and hiring behavior in response to revenue changes as firms without WTAs. One possible explanation is that firms without WTAs used short-time work (STW) to adjust hours worked instead. However, the authors find that firms with WTAs use STW more than firms without WTAs.
Originality/value
These findings call into question the popular hypothesis that WTAs were the key driver of the unusually small increase in German unemployment in the Great Recession.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors thank the Editor Martin Kahanec and two anonymous referees for valuable comments. Almut Balleer is grateful for support from the Knut och Alice Wallenbergs stiftelse KAW 2011.0144. Britta Gehrke and Christian Merkl are grateful for support from the Fritz Thyssen Research Foundation.
Citation
Balleer, A., Gehrke, B. and Merkl, C. (2017), "Some surprising facts about working time accounts and the business cycle in Germany", International Journal of Manpower, Vol. 38 No. 7, pp. 940-953. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJM-05-2017-0100
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2017, Emerald Publishing Limited