期刊名称：HIER Discussion Paper Series / Harvard Institute of Economic Research
出版年度：2005
卷号：2005
出版社：Harvard Institute of Economic Research
摘要：Americans average 25.1 working hours per person in working age per week, but the
Germans average 18.6 hours. The average American works 46.2 weeks per year,
while the French average 40 weeks per year. Why do western Europeans work so
much less than Americans? Recent work argues that these differences result from
higher European tax rates, but the vast empirical labor supply literature
suggests that tax rates can explain only a small amount of the differences in
hours between the U.S. and Europe. Another popular view is that these
differences are explained by long-standing European “culture,” but Europeans
worked more than Americans as late as the 1960s. In this paper, we argue that
European labor market regulations, advocated by unions in declining European
industries who argued “work less, work all” explain the bulk of the difference
between the U.S. and Europe. These policies do not seem to have increased
employment, but they may have had a more society-wide influence on leisure
patterns because of a social multiplier where the returns to leisure increase as
more people are taking longer vacations.
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