Overtime Hours in Great Britain Over the Period 1975-1999: A Panel Data Analysis

31 Pages Posted: 23 Jun 2000

See all articles by Adriaan Kalwij

Adriaan Kalwij

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Mary Gregory

University of Oxford - Department of Economics

Date Written: May 2000

Abstract

Around 40% of the male workforce regularly works 8 to 9 hours a week of paid overtime. This paper investigates the determinants of overtime hours in Britain over the period 1975-1999. For this purpose a panel data Tobit model is estimated using the very large panel of employees from the National Earnings Survey Panel Dataset. The empirical results show that changes in the job-mix across the economy, from high to low overtime jobs rather than within-job changes in the use of overtime, account for most of the apparent decline in the extent of overtime working over the 1990s. Within jobs, the GDP cycle has a significant impact on overtime work, while labour market conditions, represented by the unemployment rate, do not. The elasticity of total working hours with respect to wages is found to be close to zero and with respect to contractual hours close to unity. Furthermore, the results show that the decline of unionisation has not altered the use of overtime.

Keywords: Overtime work, contractual hours, panel data Tobit model

JEL Classification: C23, C33, C44, J00

Suggested Citation

Kalwij, Adriaan S. and Gregory, Mary, Overtime Hours in Great Britain Over the Period 1975-1999: A Panel Data Analysis (May 2000). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=233904 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.233904

Adriaan S. Kalwij (Contact Author)

IZA Institute of Labor Economics ( email )

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

Mary Gregory

University of Oxford - Department of Economics ( email )

Manor Road Building
Manor Road
Oxford, OX1 3BJ
United Kingdom
44 1865 271 951 (Phone)
44 1865 271 094 (Fax)

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