Titelaufnahme

A nine-factor input model is developed to estimate the monthly demand for employment, capital, and weekly hours per worker/workweek in U.S. Manufacturing. The labor inputs correspond to production and non-production workers disaggregated by overtime and non-overtime employment. Policy simulations are conducted to examine the short-run effects on the monthly growth rates for employment, labor earnings, capital usage, and the workweek from either a) raising the overtime premium to double-time, or b) reducing the standard workweek to 35 hours. Although the growth rate policy effects are heterogeneous across disaggregated labor input categories, on aver- age both policy changes exhibit negative effects on the growth rates of industry-wide employment, earnings, and nonlabor input usage. The growth rate of the workweek is virtually unaffected by raising the overtime premium but is negatively impacted by reducing the standard work week.