Related BLS programs | Related articles
Wage differentials associated with flextime
Bonnie Sue Gariety and Sherrill Shaffer
This article presents an empirical test of wage differentials associated with flextime, by gender, stated motivation for using flextime, industry, and major occupation. The test implicitly compares the relative strengths of two opposing effects: a negative compensating wage differential resulting from workers’ preferences for flextime and a positive wage differential associated with higher productivity of workers on flextime attributed to what economists call the "efficiency wage hypothesis." Although previous studies have found evidence that flextime increases both productivity1 and workers’ satisfaction,2 scant evidence has emerged thus far regarding the net quantitative or qualitative impact of these factors on equilibrium wages.
This excerpt is from an article published in the March 2001 issue of the Monthly Labor Review. The full text of the article is available in Adobe Acrobat's Portable Document Format (PDF). See How to view a PDF file for more information.
Read abstract Download full article in PDF (110K)
Footnotes
1 See John D. Owen,
"Flexitime: Some Problems and Solutions," Industrial and Labor
Relations Review, January 1977, pp. 152–160; Steven G. Allen, "An
Empirical Model of Work Attendance," Review of Economics and Statistics,
February 1980, pp. 77–87; D. R. Dalton and D. Mesch, "The Impact of
Flexible Scheduling on Employee Attendance and Turnover," Administrative
Science Quarterly, June 1990, pp. 370–87; and Edward M. Shepard, Thomas J.
Clifton, and Douglas Kruse, "Flexible Work Hours and Productivity: Some
Evidence from the Pharmaceutical Industry," Industrial Relations,
January 1996, pp. 123–39.
2 Marni Ezra and Melissa Deckman,
"Balancing Work and Family Responsibilities: Flextime and Child Care in the
Federal Government," Public Administration Review, March–April
1996, pp. 174–79.
Related Monthly Labor Review articles
Flexible schedules and shift work: replacing the '9-to-5' workday?.—Aug. 2000.
Within Monthly Labor Review Online:
Welcome | Current
Issue | Index | Subscribe
| Archives
Exit Monthly Labor Review Online:
BLS Home | Publications & Research
Papers