No Bees, No Honey: An empirical study on the relationship between working conditions and working hours in the intensive margin on the Dutch labour market between 2008-2021

Abstract

This thesis examines the relationship between working conditions and working hours in the intensive margin on the Dutch labour market between 2008 and 2021, using the Longitudinal Internet studies for the Social Sciences (LISS) panel dataset. The empirical analysis encompasses a total of 20712 employees in the primary sample. The findings suggest a statistical and economic significant relationship between working conditions and actual hours worked per week in both the Pooled OLS-estimates and Fixed Effects-estimates. Additionally, effect size and significance are often smaller in the latter, when timeinvariant unobservable effects are accounted for. The primary sample findings suggest Mental Effort and New Skills are the most important individual working conditions for the labour supply decision. However, researchers and policymakers should heed caution as findings are sensitive to the demographic composition of subsample data, cut-off points or assumptions.