Alexandre Mas’s research while affiliated with Princeton University and other places

Labor Supply and the Value of Non-Work Time: Experimental Estimates from the Field

Alternative work arrangements, defined both by working conditions and by workers’ relationship to their employers, are heterogeneous and common in the United States. This article reviews the literature on workers’ preferences over these arrangements, inputs to firms’ decisions to offer them, and the impact of regulation. It also highlights several descriptive facts: The typical worker is in a job where almost none of the tasks can be performed from home, work arrangements have been relatively stable over the past 20 years, work conditions vary substantially with education, and jobs with schedule or location flexibility are less family friendly on average. This last fact explains why women are not more likely to have schedule or location flexibility and seem to largely reduce their working hours to get more family-friendly arrangements.

Article

June 2019

35 Reads

34 Citations

American Economic Review Insights

We estimate the marginal value of non-work time (MVT) using a field experiment. We offered job applicants randomized wage-hour bundles. Choices over these bundles yield estimates of the MVT as a function of hours, tracing out a labor supply relationship. The substitution effect is positive. Individual labor supply is highly elastic at low hours and more inelastic at higher hours. For unemployed applicants, our preferred estimate of the average opportunity cost of a full-time job due to lost leisure and household production is 60 percent of after-tax marginal product, and 72 percent when including fixed costs of employment and child-care costs. (JEL C93, J22, J24, J31, J64, J65)

Article

December 2017

261 Reads

699 Citations

American Economic Review

We employ a discrete choice experiment in the employment process for a national call center to estimate the willingness to pay distribution for alternative work arrangements relative to traditional office positions. Most workers are not willing to pay for scheduling flexibility, though a tail of workers with high valuations allows for sizable compensating differentials. The average worker is willing to give up 20 percent of wages to avoid a schedule set by an employer on short notice, and 8 percent for the option to work from home. We also document that many job-seekers are inattentive, and we account for this in estimation.

Article

January 2016

23 Reads

14 Citations

SSRN Electronic Journal

Alternative Work Arrangements

... By studying people actually competing for political positions, we study the relevant population to these hypothetical positions. Our respondents are therefore highly familiar with the job traits portrayed in the hypothetical positions, which limits the potential risk of hypothetical bias that conjoint experiments can suffer from (Folke and Rickne 2022;Mas and Pallais 2020). ...
Reference:
The Gendered Cost of Politics

Citing Article
August 2020

Annual Review of Economics

Labor Supply and the Value of Non-Work Time: Experimental Estimates from the Field

... 11 For example, Pagán [2013] finds that "disability steals time:" disabled individuals devote less time to market work (especially females), and more time to domestic work such as cooking, cleaning and child care, to tertiary activities such as personal care and medical treatment. On wage measures, Mas and Pallais [2019] rightly argue that the market wage is only an approximation of the opportunity cost of employed workers but not of unemployed workers' opportunity cost which is difficult to measure since it reflects activities that happen outside the market. ...
Reference:
Care work and the demographic composition of households: two Asian cases

Citing Article
June 2019

American Economic Review Insights

... • Equal Pay Initiatives: Governments should enforce policies ensuring equal pay for equal work, reducing financial vulnerabilities for women (Goldin, 2014). • Flexible Work Arrangements: Recognising the dual roles many women play (work and home), offering flexible work arrangements can help them balance both effectively (Mas & Pallais, 2017). • Localised Solutions for Global Problems: • Cultural Sensitivity: Financial behaviours and decisions are often rooted in local cultures and beliefs. ...
Reference:
Financial Literacy in the Modern Economy: Bridging the Knowledge Gap for Entrepreneurs and Beyond

Citing Article
December 2017

American Economic Review

... This project also contributes to and extends several literatures in the political economy of the workplace. Broadly, our project extends existing work in economics and management that focus on preferences for types of work along economic dimensions such as compensation, flexibility, and benefits (Beglo and Gorges 2018;Eriksson and Kristensen 2014;Flory, Leibbrandt, and List 2015;Freeman and Rogers 2006;Frymer 2005;Kostiuk 1990; Mas and Pallais 2017;Wiswall and Zafar 2018). Building on Freeman and Rogers (2006) and Kochan et al. (2019), we argue that workers have preferences over the workplace's economic and political fundamentals (Anderson 2017;Dahl 1986;Eidlin and Uetricht 2018;Gourevitch 2014). ...
Reference:
What Do Americans Want from (Private) Government? Experimental Evidence Demonstrates that Americans Want Workplace Democracy

Citing Article
January 2016

SSRN Electronic Journal