@techreport{NBERw5724,
 title = "Has Work-Sharing Worked in Germany?",
 author = "Jennifer Hunt",
 institution = "National Bureau of Economic Research",
 type = "Working Paper",
 series = "Working Paper Series",
 number = "5724",
 year = "1996",
 month = "August",
 URL = "http://www.nber.org/papers/w5724",
 abstract = {Starting in 1985, (West) German unions began to reduce standard hours on an industry by industry basis, in an attempt to lower unemployment.  Whether work-sharing  works - whether employment rises when hours per worker are reduced - is theoretically ambiguous.  I test this using both individual data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and industry data to exploit the cross-section and time-series hours variation.  For the 1984-1989 period I find that, in response to a one hour fall in standard hours, employment rose by 0.3-0.7%, but that total hours worked fell 2-3%, implying possible output losses.  As a group workers were better off, however, as the wage bill rose.  The employment growth implied by the mean standard hours decline, at most 1.1%, was not enough to bring German employment growth close to the U.S. rate.  Results for the 1990-94 period were more pessimistic.},
}