A MODEL OF WORKING TIME UNDER UTILITY COMPETITION IN THE LABOR-MARKET

The text develops a model of wage and working-time setting by profit-m aximizing firms in a competitive labor market with homogeneous workers . Emphasis is placed on the role played by fixed costs of labor and of workers' varying effectiveness in time. Competition among firms impli es a constraint on the utility level associated to the labor contract. The model contributes to explain insiders' rationing and other contem porary stylized facts, and lends itself to a particular approach to th e problem of evaluating the consequences of mandatory working-time red uctions.