Men earn less under working time accounts: a puzzle?

ABSTRACT

In recent years more and more working time accounts (WTA) have been introduced. From a theoretical perspective both employers and employees benefit from such an instrument. Indeed, empirical studies show that life satisfaction of workers is larger under a WTA regime than under a non-WTA regime. However, more detailed investigations in this article reveal wages to be lower for men under WTA regimes. Why should men accept WTA when they earn less? Subgroup analyses show that these results are only valid for some groups of individuals. Our analysis allows us to deliver some explanations and to exclude other possible reasons. The major results are: (1) High-income workers suffer higher losses; (2) the shorter the compensation period of WTA systems the lower the wage reduction imposed by WTA; (3) the length of total working time does not seem to affect the link between WTA and wages but the length of overtime; (4) men accept wage losses from WTA if they can adjust actual to desired working hours.

KEYWORDS:

• Working hours
• gender
• wages
• satisfaction

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• J16
• J28
• J29
• J31

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.