Flexible Working Patterns and Factor Utilisation: A Cross-country Comparison

Abstract

Rigidities in the labour and products markets are often considered to adversely affect the economic equilibrium and to be one of the causes of the variation in employment rates across the industrialised economies (OECD, 2006). Empirical analyses of the labour market have essentially focused on rigidities caused by strict employment protection legislation (OECD, 2004). They conclude that these rigidities have a direct effect on the labour market equilibrium but also an indirect impact because they affect investment behaviour and lead to the search for higher productivity gains (OECD, 2003). However, to our knowledge, very few studies have aimed at comparing rigidities in working patterns among countries. Yet these rigidities have a direct effect on the so-called productive efficiency, i.e. the utilisation of production factors capital and labour. This chapter proposes a cross-country analysis of flexible working patterns. We compare and analyse the use of different flexibility patterns that enable the decoupling of working time and operating time, such as shift (work) or staggered working times.1 In this chapter, a flexible working pattern is defined as a working pattern where working hours and operating hours are decoupled.