Does schedule irregularity affect productivity? Evidence from random assignment into college classes

Abstract

Workers with irregular or on-call work schedules constitute up to 17% of the workforce in the US. We identify the causal impact of schedule regularity on productivity by leveraging data from a Vietnamese university where freshmen were randomly assigned into highly-varying course schedules. Some schedules had consistent start times across the week, while others had extreme shifts in daily start times. Though we find a robust relationship between schedules and self-reported sleep, we precisely estimate no discernible differences in achievement across students with differing start time variability. Like prior studies, we find gains in achievement to delayed start times.