So what's your explanation for the greater "preference" (as the bourgeois economists say) for leisure in Europe? Their explanation seems rather tortured and bogus, but I'd like to see a better one.
Doug
As promised, I try to offer my personal explanation after introducing the matter a little bit.
It seems to me that in their long paper, supported by a lot of formulas and data, they don't really say much. They actually end up saying that it could even be that more leisure together can solve a coordination problem and could be good, even if they appear to doubt it. They disseminate the paper of biased sentences like "the in-famous 35 hours week" or "This evidence suggests that Europeans seem to be happy to work less and less. Whether they internalize the macroeconomic effect of working less, like relative shrinking of the size of their economies relative to emerging countries, decadence in the relative prominence of Europe as an economic superpower, is of course a different matter".
Basically I hate the USA Vs Europe approach. It would be better to discuss the systems aiming at improving both. Of course an american in Europe would soon behave like an European, and vice versa. I don't believe any of the Calvinist ethics stuff, today even less than at Franklin times.
Why do people work? a) for an ideal or to raise kids. I think today this applies less than before. b) because they need to rebuild what has been destroyed. I think this applies to Europe after the war, until the 60ties. c) because they have to pay their bills. I think this is one of the important reasons today and this could make a difference between US and Europe, as I discuss in point 'second' below.
First of all it is not so certain that Europeans work so much less. We should consider how unemployment is computed and there are many issues that divide US and Europe in this regard. It seems to me that significant differences in unemployment values are due to how unemployment is surveyed here and there. Perhaps it would be more plausible to try to compare EU and US workers in a specific industry.
Second: is it bad to work less or to wish to work less? Why do we need to work like 100 years ago, when technologies have improved so much? Of course people prefer leisure to work, if they can afford to. (Leisure, according to the paper, is also working at home, taking care of the house and the family.) How can they afford to work less? By having some other income, like the rent of a flat, or being satisfied with what they have without feeling too much the need of 'consuming'. In Italy it happens that retired elders live in the family with sons or daughters. Their pension is more money for the family. Italians are big savers (among the highest rate in the world) and so usually people don't need to work a lot to meet debt payments. There hasn't been a strong 'debt whip' so far. In Italy usually people settle the credit card account one shot, every month; no expensive monthly payments with 20% interests. Unfortunately things are changing and people start falling in debt, and it is bad. They will have to work more...
Third: the 'work less work all' union argument is not necessarily wrong and the 35 hours are not infamous. What is infamous is the high speed at which globalisation proceeds, putting in competition (too fast) workers from less developed countries with workers in more developed ones. What matters is productivity. No rational employer is happy by seeing the employees in their chairs but rather by seeing profits. If profits are the same with less hours worked, that is not a problem at all. My personal experience in Italy, USA or Japan, is that in Italy we tend to work less hours but in a more concentrated way. In Japan I have seen workers staying in the office overtime without anything to do, just to be fair to the only one who had real overtime to do; that is not efficient. In Italy, one who claims that economy is bad because people take too many holidays is Berlusconi, and people laugh. The problem is that people have little work to do, there are no shipment canceled due to holidays.
Fourth: Holidays together are generally a good thing, you don't need a mathematical model to prove it. There is a society, there are families, people of course enjoy spending vacations together. Anybody realizes that usually a boy and a girl feel happier if they can go places together, having holidays at the same time. For this reason it is good to have a saturday and a sunday or even having a month, as we do over here in August. The industrial system relies on suppliers, truck drivers and other services and, if some of them close, it is more convenient for everybody to close, if possible. In Italy it is actually MORE EFFICIENT to close down all together and go to the seaside or tourist resorts that open up in that period. This is also safer for tourists, without too many trucks on the roads. If we do so, it is because we choose to. Unions have nothing to do with it. I have a company and I can decide how to manage holidays and I find it more efficient to close in August ( this year we will close from the 6th to the 28th of August) and during the Christmas holidays (usually 23rd Dec to 7th Jan). Most of my colleagues do the same.
Fifth: It is good to be more and more involved in leisure because that will be our business of the future. Italy is losing industries: they are moved in the far east or in eastern Europe. One of the reasons why people work less is basically that there is less work to do. May be in the future we will be in a position to exploit our attitude towards leisure, convincing chineses to act the same way and come to Italy for vacation. If their future union leaders could convince their employers as european union leaders have done here, they will also work less and enjoy more, for the benefit of all.
Massimo Portolani
