This paper develops a two-period specific human capital model in which the bargaining parties seek to achieve optimal wage-hours contracts in the face of asymmetrically held information. With a single wage rate, we show that the problem of inefficient separations is so severe that, effectively, no specific training would take place. A wage premium on weekly overtime hours serves to reduce the effects of asymmetric information although it does not completely eliminate inefficiency. For those weekly hours for which a premium is paid, worker compensation exceeds the value of marginal product. There is an optimal automatic compensatory differential rule represented by an inverse relationship between the contractual wage and the overtime premium. Implications of imposing mandatory rules for premium pay and hours of work, as practiced in the United States, are assessed. The model is found to offer insights into important earlier finding in the literature.
We use cookies to provide you with an optimal website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site as well as cookies that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, you may not be able to use all of the site's functions.
Cookie settings
These necessary cookies are required to activate the core functionality of the website. An opt-out from these technologies is not available.
In order to further improve our offer and our website, we collect anonymous data for statistics and analyses. With the help of these cookies we can, for example, determine the number of visitors and the effect of certain pages on our website and optimize our content.