Robin J. Ruffell

The Cost of Overtime Hours in British Production Industries

Both theoretical and empirical labor market papers that incorporate the workers-hours dichotomy often contain assumptions about shapes of the overtime premium schedules faced by industry. Using cross-section data for British production industries in three years of sharply contrasting economic climates (1981, 1984, and 1988), this paper investigates empirically the appropriate choice of schedule and, therefore, the industrial cost consequences of changing the average number of overtime hours per period. The analysis tackles problems associated with data disaggregation, the proportion of workers working overtime, omitted variables, heteroscedasticity, and intertemporal variation. Copyright 1993 by The London School of Economics and Political Science.

What shapes are overtime premium schedules? Some evidence from Japan, the UK, and the US

We provide estimates of the shapes of overtime premium schedules for three contrasting economies, based on two-digit industries through time. At one end of the spectrum, the United Kingdom has no legislation concerning the minimum premium rate while, at the other, the United States mandates a high minimum premium of 1.5 times the straight-time hourly rate. In between these extremes, Japan sets a minimum premium of 1.25. We concentrate, in particular, on the question of whether the premium rises in average hours.

Preferences and the labour supply of married women

Abstract The paper reports the main results of using British cross-section data to estimate a labour supply function in which preference variables are interacted with terms measuring the slope and position of the budget constraint.