Firm concentration & job design: the case of schedule flexible work arrangements

Working paper

We build a model of job design under monopsony that yields predictions over the relationship between: (i) the amenity value of non-wage job features; (ii) whether they are costly or profitable to firms; (iii) monopsony power. We analyse the amenity value of schedule flexibility offered in the labour market by combining our model’s predictions with a new measure of schedule flexibility, which we construct from job vacancy text using a supervised machine learning approach. We show that the amenity value of schedule flexibility depends crucially on whether it is offered alongside a salaried contract that insures workers from earnings variation.

Authors: Adams-Prassl, A; Balgova, M; Qian, M; Waters, T

• Publication status: Published
• Publisher: University of Oxford
• Series: Department of Economics Discussion Paper Series
• Place of publication: Oxford
• Publication date: 2023-03-22
• ISSN: 1471-0498
• Paper number: 1002
• Language: English