TY  - JOUR
AU  - Lee,Jungmin
AU  - Kawaguchi,Daiji
AU  - Hamermesh,Daniel S.
TI  - Aggregate Impacts of a Gift of Time
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 17649
PY  - 2011
Y2  - December 2011
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17649
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17649.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Jungmin Lee
Sogang University
Seoul, Korea
E-Mail: junglee@sogang.ac.kr

Daiji Kawaguchi
Faculty of Economics
Hitotsubashi University
Naka 2-1
Kunitachi, Tokyo 186-8601, Japan
Tel: 81-42-580-8851
Fax: 81-42-580-8851
E-Mail: kawaguch@econ.hit-u.ac.jp

Daniel S. Hamermesh
Department of Economics
University of Texas
Austin, TX 78712-1173
Tel: 512/475-8526
Fax: 512/471-3510
E-Mail: hamermes@eco.utexas.edu
AB  - How would people spend additional time if confronted by permanent declines in market work?  We examine the impacts of cuts in legislated standard hours that raised employers’ overtime costs in Japan around 1990 and Korea in the early 2000s.  Using time-diaries from before and after these shocks, we show that these shocks were effective—per-capita hours of market work declined discretely.  The economy-wide drops in market work were reallocated solely to leisure and personal maintenance. In the absence of changing household technology a permanent time gift leads to no increase in time spent in household production by the average individual.
ER  -