• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.59-88
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• 2014

I estimate the non-market effects of implementing five-day workweek controlling for the individual-job fixed effect. I find that the implementation of five-day workweek has improved an individual's subjective health status, increased the frequency of exercises, increased the probability to get education or training other than job training, improved subjective quality of life, increased spending for leisure and cultural activities, and improved an individual's satisfaction with the job and the employer. Much of the effects are due to reduction not of working hours but of working days.

• Korean Journal of Labor Studies
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.47-83
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• 2017

The Swedish labor market secures flexibility in the use of labor force by means of non-regular workers such as temporary workers among others instead of regular workers' layoffs. Although the labor law reform in the late 2000s made it easier to use temporary workers and the outbreak of the economic crisis strengthened the power of user firms against labor unions, the size of temporary workers was scaled down. It is the aim of this study to analyze the change in the use of temporary workers, to examine the effect of the labor law reform and that of economic crisis in that regard, and to explain how, over the use of temporary workers, user firms' strategy to secure flexibility and labor unions' strategy to regulate flexibility interact with each other so as to establish a new equilibrium through conflicts and compromises. The labor law reform to enhance the flexibility in the use of temporary workers failed to entail amendments of collective contracts. Besides, out of the economic crisis, user firms adopted a new policy to use third party workers more, refraining from employing temporary workers. That's why the number of temporary workers has declined eventually. User firms prefer to use third party workers because they could avoid their own responsibility as an employer and they could rely on 'permanent temporary' workers without any time limit. Labor unions, however, responded with a strategy to lay more strict regulations on the use of third party workers, so that third party workers could be used only for limited cause for external numerical flexibility. As a result, the managed flexibility thesis comes to prevail to the usage of non-regular workers in general beyond the category of agency workers. Korea with severe abuse of third party workers should learn from Swedish labor unions' strategy to provide third party workers with stronger employment security and higher wages so as to prevent user firms from abusing third party workers.