Going the Extra Mile: What Taxi Rides Tell Us about the Long-Hour Culture in Finance

Abstract

We analyze the effects of banks’ “protected-weekend” policies, which aim at improving the work-life balance of junior bankers by guaranteeing them free time during weekends, in particular on Saturdays. We study how these policies affected bankers’ working hours, as assessed from taxi rides from bank addresses and their immediate surroundings in New York City. While we find the policies induced bankers to stay at home on Saturdays, we also find they induced them to work more on other days. Our results suggest it is difficult to change bank culture by decree, and that well-meaning policies can have unintended consequences.