Working Time: Workers, Firms and Legislation (BCAM Workshop)
When:
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Venue:
Birkbeck Central
BCAM Workshop 2026: Working Time: Workers, Firms and Legislation
This one-day workshop at Birkbeck, University of London, brings together leading international economists to discuss the economics of working time. Topics include global working hours, health effects, firm-level impacts, gender-specific restrictions, and insights from legislative reforms such as the French 35-hour week and recent four-day week trials. The workshop will be in-person but all the presentations can be followed online.
Preliminary Programme
10.00-10.30: Registration and Coffee
10.30-10.50: Welcome: Working Time: Workers, Firms and Legislation, Pedro Gomes (Birkbeck, University of London)
10.50-11.40: Global Working Hours, Amory Gethin (World Bank)
11.40-12.30: Should Friday be the New Saturday?, Laura Pilossoph (Duke University)
12.30-13.30: Lunch Break
13.30-14.20: Beyond the Clock: Labor Market Effects of Lifting Gender-Specific Hours Restrictions, Nicolas L. Ziebarth (University of Missouri)
14.20-15.10: Working Hours and Health, Daniel Kuehnle (University of Duisburg–Essen)
15.10-15.40: Coffee Break
15.40-16.30: Firm-Level Effects of Reductions in Working Hours, Kentaro Asai (Vienna University of Economics and Business)
16.30-17.20: Revisiting the Workweek Reduction Debate: Lessons from France's 35-Hour Policy, Pauline Carry (Princeton University)
17.20-18.00: Productivity Lessons from a 4 Day Week Trial in Portugal, Pedro Gomes (Birkbeck, University of London)
18.00-19.30: Drinks
19.30-21.00: Dinner (by invitation)
Link to most up-to-date programme
Contact name: Pedro Gomes
Contact phone: 07857422866
Speakers-
Amory Gethin
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Researcher in the World Bank Development Research Group and Political Cleavages and Redistribution Coordinator at the World Inequality Lab. Amory maintains the World Political Cleavages and Inequality Database. He received his PhD from Paris School of Economics and won the first prize for the best PhD in Economics in Paris in 2024. His research studies the sources and consequences of long-run transformations in the world economy, with a focus on global poverty reduction, the role played by public policies in shaping economic growth and inequality, and the dynamics of political conflict in contemporary democracies.
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Daniel Kuehnle
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Daniel is a professor of economics in the Faculty of Business Administration and Economics at the University of Duisburg-Essen. He is an applied microeconomist with interests are in health, labour and family economics.
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Kentaro Asai
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Kentaro is Assistant Professor at Vienna University of Economics and Business, with a PhD. from Paris School of Economics. His research fields are Labor Economics and Applied Microeconomic, studying the topics of working hours, skills, gender wage gap, and, income inequality.
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Laura Pilossoph
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Laura is the Kathleen Kaylor and G. Richard Wagoner, Jr. Assistant Professor of Economics at Duke University and an NBER Research Fellow. She received a Ph.D. in economics from The University of Chicago in 2013. Her research interests include macroeconomics and labor.
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Nicolas L. Ziebarth
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Nicolas is the Cook Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri and Research Associate at the NBER. He has completed his PhD in Economics, Northwestern University. Co-Editor of the Economic Inquiry, he specializes in empirical macroeconomics and economic history, in particular on the Great Depression.
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Pauline Carry
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Pauline is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics and the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Before joining Princeton University, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Becker Friedman Institute, University of Chicago. She received her PhD in economics from Institut Polytechnique de Paris in 2023 and her dissertation was awarded the first prize by the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. Her research focuses on labor economics and macroeconomics, with particular interest in how employment contracts are determined and the role of labor market institutions.
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Prof Pedro Gomes
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Pedro is a Professor of Economics at Birkbeck, University of London, where he has been teaching since 2017. He obtained his PhD from the London School of Economics in 2010. A researcher in the macroeconomics of labor markets, he has published extensively in academic journals and contributed chapters to books. In 2021, he published Friday is the New Saturday in the UK, presenting his vision of the four-day week as a more efficient and sustainable way to organize the economy.
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