The Cost of Overtime Hours in British Production Industries

Abstract

Both theoretical and empirical labour market papers that incorporate the workers-hours dichotomy often contain assumptions about shapes of the overtime premium schedules faced by industry. Using cross-section data for British production industries in three years of sharply contrasting economic climates (1981, 1984 and 1988), this paper investigates empirically the appropriate choice of schedule and, therefore, the industrial cost consequences of changing the average number of overtime hours per period. The analysis tackles problems associated with data disaggregation, the proportion of workers working overtime, omitted variables, heteroscedasticity and intertemporal variation.