The Labor Supply of Self-Employed Workers: The Choice of Working Hours in Worker Co-ops

By: Pencavel, John (Stanford University)

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8561&r=ltv

Workers in cooperatives are self-employed workers and, if they resemble employees in conventional workplaces, they care about the length of their working hours. In this paper, their choice of hours is characterized as a conventional labor supply decision and a familiar hours-wage relationship is derived. This is estimated using mill-year observations on the plywood co-ops in the Pacific Northwest. The results are compared with those from the work behavior of other self-employed workers and with working hours in capitalist plywood mills.

Keywords: labor supply, hours, worker co-ops

JEL: J22 J54