Flexible Work Time in Germany: Do Workers Like it and How Have Employers Exploited it Over the Cycle?

After describing qualitatively the increasingly flexible organization of work hours in Germany, I turn to the German Socio-Economic Panel to quantify practices and trends, and assess their effects on workers and employers. Measuring flexibility as the extent to which overtime is compensated with time off, and hence receives no overtime premium, I show that hourly{paid workers have undergone a regime shift towards more flexibility since 1984, while salaried workers have maintained an already high level of flexibility. I find weak evidence that flexibility causes workers to be slightly less satisfied with their work and more satisfied with their leisure. Over the boom and bust cycle of 2004-2009, I find that for hourly-paid workers in manufacturing, paid and unpaid overtime hours were equally cyclical, but that the cycle for unpaid overtime led the cycle for paid overtime. The results suggest that while the new practices do free employers to make more cyclical adjustments in hours, they have not eliminated the need for adjustments in paid overtime. I identify as constraints ceilings on cumulated overtime hours to be compensated with time off and the window within which the compensation in time off must occur

Können Arbeitsbedingungen das „return-to-entrepreneurship puzzle“ erklären?

Some influential studies show that many self-employed could apparently achieve higher earnings were they working in paid employment. One potential explanation for this 'return-to-entrepreneurship puzzle', not empirically tested yet, is that entrepreneurship entails non-monetary benefits, such as autonomy, flexibility, and task variety. Using German data and a decomposition analysis, I examine the contribution of these working conditions to the observed earnings differential between self-employment and paid employment. I confirm that self-employed individuals report lower earnings than what they are expected to earn in paid employment. However, differences in working conditions barely contribute to the earnings gap. This finding casts some doubt on the relevance of compensating differentials for explaining the return-to-entrepreneurship puzzle

Entrepreneurs and Freelancers: Are They Time and Income Multidimensional Poor? The German Case

Entrepreneurs and freelancers, the self-employed, commonly are characterized as not only to be relatively rich in income but also as to be rich in time because of their time-sovereignty in principle. Our introducing study scrutinises these results and notions about the well-being situation of self-employed persons not only by asking about traditional single income poverty but also by considering time poverty within the framework of a new interdependent multidimensional (IMD) poverty concept. The German Socio-economic panel with satisfaction data serves as the data base for the population wide evaluation of the substitution/compensation between genuine, personal leisure time and income. The available detailed Time Use Surveys of 1991/92 and 2001/2 of the Federal Statistics Office provide the data to quantify the multidimensional poverty in all the IMD poverty regimes. Important result: self-employed with regard to single income poverty, single time poverty and interdependent multidimensional time and income poverty in both years are much more affected by time and income poverty than all other active persons defining the working poor. A significant proportion of non-income-poor but time poor of the active population are not able to compensate their time deficit even by an above poverty income. These people are neglected so far within the poverty and well-being discussion, the discussion about the 'working poor' and in the discussion about time squeeze and time pressure in general and in particular for the self-employed as entrepreneurs and freelancers

The Pleasures and Pains of Self-Employment: A Panel Data Analysis of Satisfaction with Life, Work, and Leisure

We investigate how a transition from paid employment to self-employment in the labor market influences life satisfaction. Furthermore, we consider the dynamics of work and leisure satisfaction because the balance between work and leisure is an important element of life satisfaction. Fixed-effects regressions using German Socio-Economic Panel data (1984-2012) reveal that switching to self-employment benefits life and work satisfaction. The effects on life satisfaction are weak and temporary, but they are pronounced and relatively persistent for work satisfaction. However, the gain in work satisfaction is outweighed by a decrease in leisure satisfaction, thus placing work-life balance under severe pressure

The Timing of Daily Demand for Goods and Services – Multivariate Probit Estimates and Microsimulation Results for an Aged Population with German Time Use Diary Data

Though consumption research provides a broad spectrum of theoretical and empirical founded results, studies based on a daily focus are missing. Knowledge about the individual timing of daily demand for goods and services, opens – beyond a genuine contribution to consumption research – interesting societal and macro economic as well as individual personal and firm perspectives: it is important for an efficient timely coordination of supply and demand in the timing perspective as well as for a targeted economic, social and societal policy for a better support of the every day coordination of life. Last not least, the individual daily public and private living situations will be visible, which are of particular importance for the social togetherness in family and society. Our study contributes to the timing of daily consumption for goods and services with an empirical founded microanalysis on the basis of more than 37.000 individual time use diaries of the nationwide Time Budget Survey of the German Federal Statistical Office 2001/02. We describe the individual timing of daily demand for goods and services for important socio-demographic groups like for women and men, the economic situation with income poverty and daily working hour arrangements. The multivariate microeconometric explanation of the daily demand for goods and services is based on a latent utility maximizing approach over a day. We estimate an eight equation Multivariate/Simultaneous Probit Model, which allows the decision for multiple consumption activities in more than one time period a day. The estimates quantify effects on the timing of daily demand by individual socio-economic variables, which encompasses, personal, household, regional characteristics as well as daily working hour arrangements within a flexible labour market. The question about individual effects of an aged society on the timing of daily demand for goods and services is analyzed with our microsimulation model ServSim and a population forecast for 2020 by the German Federal Statistical Office. Main result: There are significant differences in explaining the timing of daily demand for goods compared to services on the one hand and in particular for different daily time periods. The conclusion: without the timing aspects an important and significant dimension for understanding individual consumption behaviour and their impacts on other individual living conditions would be missing

Are Self-Employed Really Happier than Employees? An Approach Modeling Adaptation and Anticipation Effects to Self-Employment and General Job Changes

Empirical analyses using cross-sectional and panel data found significantly higher levels of job satisfaction for self-employed than for employees. We argue that those estimates in previous studies might be biased by neglecting anticipation and adaptation effects. For testing we specify several models accounting for anticipation and adaptation to self-employment and job changes. Based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Survey (SOEP) we find that becoming self-employed is associated with large negative anticipation effects. In contrast to recent literature we find no specific long term effect of self-employment on job satisfaction. Accounting for anticipation and adaptation to job changes in general, which includes changes between employee jobs, reduces the effect of self-employment on job satisfaction by 70%. When controlling for anticipation and adaptation to job changes, we find no further anticipation effect of self-employment and a weak positive but not significant effect of self-employment on job satisfaction for three years. Thus adaptation wipes out higher satisfaction within the first three years being self-employed. According to our results previous studies at least overestimated possible positive effects of self-employment on job satisfaction