TY  - JOUR
AU  - Cardoso,Ana Rute
AU  - Hamermesh,Daniel S.
AU  - Varejão,José
TI  - The Timing of Labor Demand
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14566
PY  - 2008
Y2  - December 2008
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14566
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14566.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Ana Rute Cardoso
IAE (CSIC) and Barcelona GSE
08193 Bellaterra
Barcelona
Spain
Tel: 34(9)35806612
Fax: 34(9)35801452
E-Mail: anarute.cardoso@iae.csic.es

Daniel S. Hamermesh
Department of Economics
University of Texas
Austin, TX 78712-1173
Tel: 512/475-8526
Fax: 512/471-3510
E-Mail: hamermes@eco.utexas.edu

Jose Varejao
Faculdade de Economia, Rua Roberto Frias
4200-464 Porto
Portugal
E-Mail: varejao@fep.up.pt
AB  - We examine the timing of firms' operations in a formal model of labor demand.  Merging a variety of data sets from Portugal from 1995-2004, we describe temporal patterns of firms' demand for labor and estimate production-functions and relative labor-demand equations. The results demonstrate the existence of substitution of employment across times of the day/week and show that legislated penalties for work at irregular hours induce firms to alter their operating schedules.  The results suggest a role for such penalties in an unregulated labor market, such as the United States, in which unusually large fractions of work are performed at night and on weekends.
ER  -