Shiftwork, Capital Hours and Productivity Change

✍ Scribed by Murray F. Foss (auth.)

• Publisher: Springer US
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 391
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This volume brings together and expands on a body of research that I began in the early 1960s and have continued up to the present. It deals mainly with shiftwork-work that is performed during other than normal daytime hours. Shiftwork is a characteristic of economic life in the United States and abroad that has increased in importance over the years; according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, one out of five full-time and part-time employees in the United States works on shifts. My interest in this field concerns fixed capital, specifically, changes in weekly hours worked by capital over long periods of time, and the signifi­ cance of those changes in the measurement oflong-run productivity change. In studies of growth, the measurement of capital input-by capital stocks or the services yielded by those stocks-typically makes no allowance for the changing hours worked by capital. Capital services are assumed to be propor­ tional to the stocks. Consequently, in analyses of output growth in a growth­ accounting framework, the effect of longer capital hours is a component of multifactor or total factor productivity growth.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages i-xv
Front Matter....Pages 1-1
Two Views of Capital Hours....Pages 3-57
Continuous Process, Data, and a Research Agenda....Pages 59-83
Front Matter....Pages 85-85
Section 1....Pages 87-109
Section 2....Pages 111-127
Changes in the Plant Workweek from 1929 to 1976 and their Relation to Key Ratios....Pages 129-151
Reasons for Changes in Average Weekly Plant Hours from 1929 to 1976....Pages 153-170
Concluding Remarks....Pages 171-227
Section 3....Pages 229-268
Estimating Average Weekly Plant Hours in Manufacturing for the Period between 1929 and 1976....Pages 269-284
Evaluating the Manufacturing Results for Interim Years....Pages 285-308
Nonmanufacturing Industries....Pages 309-329
Office Equipment and Computers....Pages 331-366
Operating Hours ofD.S. Manufacturing Plants, 1976’1988, and Their Significance for Productivity Change....Pages 367-390
Back Matter....Pages 391-399

✦ Subjects

Labor Economics; Economic Growth; Microeconomics