Pascal Marianna

The Definition of Part-Time Work for the Purpose of International Comparisons

National definitions of part-time work are based either on hours thresholds or on an assessment by the respondent of the nature of the job, or on a combination of both methods. This report compares the results obtained from the application of an hours-based definition to job of wage and salary workers with those based on the respondent’s self-assessment, and examines the international comparability of such estimates. In countries where part-time work (national definitions) is common, jobs of more than 30 usual hours per week that are classified as part-time are significant in number. These countries tend to use a definition based on a 35 usual hours threshold. In countries where part-time work (national definitions) is relatively less common, the incidence of jobs of less than 35 usual hours per week that are classified as full-time is high. Part-time jobs are generally identified on the basis of self-assessment in these countries. As a result of these findings a definition of ...

Trends in Working Hours in OECD Countries

In recent years, the decline in average annual hours of work per person in employment, which can be traced back for over a century, has slowed. In some countries, there has even been an increase in the average annual hours per person employed. In countries where continuing falls can be observed, this can be traced to legal action (for example, France, Japan and Portugal) or to particularly vigorous negotiation between the social partners (for example, Germany and the Netherlands). The United States and Sweden both show an increase in average annual hours, in the first case due partly to an increase in overtime hours, in the second to an increase in the hours worked by part-time workers. For the European countries, the paper shows how the pattern of change in weekly working hours can be linked, inter alia, to the institutional arrangements applying in the different countries. Part-time working has both exerted downward pressure on average working hours and been an important ... Entamee depuis plus d’un siecle, la baisse du temps de travail annuel par personne disposant d’un emploi s’est ralentie depuis quelques annees, et s’est meme inversee dans certains pays. Dans ceux ou elle se poursuit, c’est suite a une action du legislateur (France, Japon, Portugal) ou a des negociations vigoureuses entre les partenaires sociaux (Allemagne et Pays-Bas). Les Etats-Unis et la Suede enregistrent l’un comme l’autre une augmentation de la duree annuelle moyenne du travail. Dans le premier cas, c’est en partie du a une progression des heures supplementaires, dans le second, a un accroissement de la duree moyenne du travail a temps partiel. Pour les pays europeens, cet article montre que l’evolution de la duree de travail hebdomadaire peut etre reliee aux dispositifs institutionnels applicables a l’echelon national. Le temps partiel est responsable d’une baisse de la duree moyenne du travail et constitue une source majeure de creation d’emplois dans la plupart des pays ...

Institutional Determinants of Worker Flows

There is little cross-country comparative evidence on the way labour market institutions shape gross job and worker flows, by and large because comparable data for many countries are scarce. By using a unique harmonised dataset on hirings and separations at the industry-level for a large majority of OECD countries, we fill this gap, by analysing the role of a number of labour and product market institutions in shaping cross-country differences in gross worker flows. In order to identify the effect of policies and institutions we consider an industry-level difference-in-difference approach. The basic premise of this approach is that the effect of a particular policy on gross job flows is greater in industries where the policy is more likely to constrain firm behaviour. We check, however, the robustness of our results using more standard cross-country/time-series estimates. The richness of the data available to us allows estimating the impact of the institutions also on the transitions from job to job, the transitions from job to nonemployment and the transitions from non-employment to jobs. We find that cross-country differences in job protection for open-ended contracts and unemployment benefits can explain a large share of crosscountry variation in gross worker flows. However, the effect of the former is essentially limited to job-tojob flows. Il y a peu de resultats comparatifs a travers les pays sur la maniere dont les institutions du marche du travail faconnent les flux bruts d’emplois et de main d’oeuvre, en raison d’un manque de donnees comparables pour un certain nombre de pays. Cet article comble cet ecart, en s’appuyant sur une base de donnees harmonisees sur les embauches et les cessations d‘emplois au niveau des secteurs d’activite pour un grand nombre de pays de l’OCDE, et en analysant comment un certain nombre d’institutions nationales des marches du travail et des produits faconnent les ecarts de reallocation de main d’oeuvre entre les pays. Afin d’identifier l’effet des politiques et des institutions nationales, nous considerons un modele de difference en differences au niveau des secteurs d’activite. Le principe de base de cette methode est que l’effet d’une certaine politique sur le flux brut d’emplois est superieur dans les industries ou cette politique est de nature a imposer une contrainte sur le comportement des entreprises. Nous verifions, cependant, la robustesse des resultats en utilisant des estimations plus standards en coupe transversale et serie temporelle. La richesse des donnees disponibles permet egalement l’estimation de l’impact des institutions sur les transitions d’un emploi a l’autre, les transitions d’un emploi au non-emploi et les transitions du nonemploi vers l’emploi. Nous trouvons que les differences inter-pays dans la protection de l’emploi pour les contrats a duree indeterminee et les prestations de chomage peuvent expliquer une large proportion des variations inter-pays des flux bruts de main d’oeuvre. Cependant, l’effet du premier est essentiellement limite aux flux d’un emploi a l’autre.

Comparing Labour Productivity Growth in the OECD Area

This paper examines how measurement problems affect international comparisons of labour productivity. It suggests that these measurement problems do not significantly affect the assessment of aggregate productivity patterns in the OECD area. However, these problems do influence the more detailed assessment of productivity growth, notably the role of specific sectors and demand components in aggregate performance. The paper shows that there are only a few significant problems regarding the comparability of nominal GDP across OECD countries, the most important being the treatment of software investment. In most cases, efforts are underway to reduce the size of these differences. Measurement differences for real GDP are also important, although several of these factors have impacts that work in different directions. Moreover, several of these problems primarily affect the distribution of total GDP across different expenditure categories and across different activities, not necessarily ...

Looking Inside the Perpetual-Motion Machine

In the economic literature there is an increasing interest in the process of job creation and destruction as well of hirings and separations. Many studies suggest that idiosyncratic firm-level characteristics shape both job and worker flows in a similar way in all countries. Others argue that cross-country differences in terms of gross job flows are minor. However, these statements are usually based on the comparison of national estimates, typically collected on the basis of different definitions and collection protocols. By contrast, in this paper, we use crosscountry comparable data on both job and worker flows to examine key determinants of these flows and of their cross-country differences. We find that idiosyncratic firm (industry, firm age and size) and worker (age, gender, education) characteristics play an important role for both gross job and worker flows in all countries. Nevertheless, in contrast with part of the literature, we find that, even controlling for these idiosyncratic factors, cross-country differences concerning both gross job and worker flows appear large and of a similar magnitude. Both job and worker flows in countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom exceed those in certain continental European countries by a factor of two. Moreover, the variation of worker flows across different dimensions is well explained by the variation of job flows, suggesting that, to a certain extent, the two flows can be used as substitutes in cross-country analysis. Consistently, churning flows, that is flows originating by firms churning workers and employees quitting and being replaced, display much less variation across countries.