This article provides a first assessment of the causal impact of the 2018–2021 reform in Korea meant to combat its long working-hour culture. The reform consists of lowering the statutory limit on total weekly working hours from 68 to 52. We apply a difference-in-difference approach in which we take advantage of the stepwise implementation of the reform by firm size using individual-level data. We present three main findings. First, the introduction of the 52-h limit reduced but far from eliminated the incidence of working more than 52 h. Second, there is some evidence that the introduction led to a reallocation of working hours, with more employees shifting from working fulltime to working overtime within the new limit (41–52 h). Third, and more tentatively, this reallocation more likely took place within firms to account for fewer overtime hours worked by their employees, rather than within households to compensate for any income effects. Overall, our results show that a lower statutory limit can help to lessen a long working-hour culture, but is an insufficient measure by itself to fully eradicate it.

中文翻译：

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加班限制减少长时间工作的局限性：来自韩国 2018 年至 2021 年工作时间改革的证据

本文首次评估了韩国 2018-2021 年改革的因果影响，旨在打击其长期工作时间文化。改革包括将每周总工作时间的法定限制从 68 小时降低到 52 小时。我们采用了一种差异对差异的方法，在这种方法中，我们利用个人层面的数据按公司规模逐步实施改革。我们提出三个主要发现。首先，52 小时限制的引入减少了但远未消除工作超过 52 小时的发生率。其次，有一些证据表明引入导致工作时间的重新分配，更多的员工从全职工作转变为在新的限制（41-52 小时）内加班。第三，更试探性地，这种重新分配更有可能发生在公司内部，以解决其雇员加班时间减少的问题，而不是发生在家庭内部，以补偿任何收入影响。总的来说，我们的结果表明，较低的法定限制有助于减少长时间工作的文化，但其本身并不足以完全根除它。