Varieties of the rat race: working hours in the age of abundance

IF 3.2 2区经济学 Q1 ECONOMICS Socio-Economic Review Pub Date : 2023-01-06 DOI:10.1093/ser/mwac067

Jan Behringer, Martin Gonzalez-Granda, Till van Treeck

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Abstract We ask why working hours in the rich world have not declined more sharply or even risen at times since the early 1980s, despite a steady increase in productivity, and why they vary so much across rich countries. We use an internationally comparable database on working hours (Bick et al., 2019) and conduct panel data estimations for a sample of 17 European countries and the USA over the period 1983–2019. We find that high or increasing top-end income inequality, decentralized labor relations, and limited government provision of education and other in-kind services contribute to long working hours. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that upward-looking status comparisons in positional consumption (‘Veblen effects’) contribute to a ‘rat race’ of long working hours that is more or less pronounced in different varieties of capitalism.

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各种激烈的竞争:物质充裕时代的工作时间

我们要问，为什么自20世纪80年代初以来，尽管生产率稳步提高，但富裕国家的工作时间并没有大幅下降，甚至有时还会上升，以及为什么富裕国家的工作时间差异如此之大。我们使用了一个关于工作时间的国际可比数据库(比克等人，2019年)，并对1983年至2019年期间17个欧洲国家和美国的样本进行了面板数据估计。我们发现，高收入不平等，分散的劳动关系，有限的政府提供的教育和其他实物服务导致了长时间的工作。我们的研究结果与一种假设是一致的，即地位消费中对地位的攀比(“凡勃伦效应”)导致了长时间工作的“激烈竞争”，这在不同类型的资本主义中或多或少都很明显。

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来源期刊

Socio-Economic Review Multiple-

CiteScore

6.80

自引率

10.80%

发文量

期刊介绍： Originating in the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE), Socio-Economic Review (SER) is part of a broader movement in the social sciences for the rediscovery of the socio-political foundations of the economy. Devoted to the advancement of socio-economics, it deals with the analytical, political and moral questions arising at the intersection between economy and society. Articles in SER explore how the economy is or should be governed by social relations, institutional rules, political decisions, and cultural values. They also consider how the economy in turn affects the society of which it is part, for example by breaking up old institutional forms and giving rise to new ones. The domain of the journal is deliberately broadly conceived, so new variations to its general theme may be discovered and editors can learn from the papers that readers submit. To enhance international dialogue, Socio-Economic Review accepts the submission of translated articles that are simultaneously published in a language other than English. In pursuit of its program, SER is eager to promote interdisciplinary dialogue between sociology, economics, political science and moral philosophy, through both empirical and theoretical work. Empirical papers may be qualitative as well as quantitative, and theoretical papers will not be confined to deductive model-building. Papers suggestive of more generalizable insights into the economy as a domain of social action will be preferred over narrowly specialized work. While firmly committed to the highest standards of scholarly excellence, Socio-Economic Review encourages discussion of the practical and ethical dimensions of economic action, with the intention to contribute to both the advancement of social science and the building of a good economy in a good society.