Do Workers Value Flexible Jobs? A Field Experiment

32 Pages Posted: 7 Jan 2019 Last revised: 19 Jun 2023

See all articles by Haoran He

Haoran He

Beijing Normal University (BNU) - School of Economics and Business Administration

David Neumark

University of California, Irvine - Department of Economics; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Qian Weng

Renmin University of China - School of Labor and Human Resources

Date Written: January 2019

Abstract

We explore workers’ valuation of job flexibility, using a field experiment conducted on a Chinese job board. Our experimental job ads differ randomly in offering jobs that are flexible regarding when one works (time flexibility) or where one works (place flexibility), and offering different salaries. Application rates are higher for flexible jobs, conditional on the salary offered, providing evidence that workers value job flexibility. Moreover, under some plausible conditions our evidence is informative about job seekers’ willingness to pay for flexible jobs of the types offered in the experiment, and points to fairly high valuation of the most flexible jobs.

Suggested Citation

He, Haoran and Neumark, David and Weng, Qian, Do Workers Value Flexible Jobs? A Field Experiment (January 2019). NBER Working Paper No. w25423, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3311395

Haoran He (Contact Author)

Beijing Normal University (BNU) - School of Economics and Business Administration ( email )

No.19 Xinwai Str
Haidian District
Beijing, 100875
China

HOME PAGE: http://business.bnu.edu.cn:8081/teachers/indexe.jsp?tid=129&type=11

David Neumark

University of California, Irvine - Department of Economics ( email )

3151 Social Science Plaza
Irvine, CA 92697-5100
United States
949-824-8496 (Phone)
949-824-2182 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~dneumark/

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

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

Qian Weng

Renmin University of China - School of Labor and Human Resources ( email )

China

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