• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.83-100
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• 2012

This paper estimates the impacts of introducing the 40 hour work week standard in South Korea on actual working hours, wages and employment. We exploit variation in timing of implementing the 40 hour work week standard across industries and establishment size and estimate the causal effects by a triple difference model. Our results show that the 40 hour work week standard decreased actual working hours by about 43 minutes while it increased hourly wage rate by 6.6%. The probability of new hires decreased by about 2.3% points.