Working Hours and Job Sharing in the EU and USA: Are Europeans Lazy? Or Americans Crazy?

A national of Italy, Tito Boeri is currently Professor of Economics at Bocconi University, Milan and acts as Scientific Director of the Fondazione Rodolfo Debenedetti. He is research fellow at CEPR, IZA and Igier-Bocconi. After obtaining his Ph.D. in economics from New York University, he was senior economist at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development from 1987 to 1996. He was also consultant to the European Commission, International MonetaryFund, the ILO, the World Bank, and the Italian Government.Michael C. Burda has been a member of the School of Business and Economics at the Humboldt- Universität zu Berlin since 1993. In 1987, he received his PhD at Harvard University, after which he was an assistant, and then associate professor of economics at INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France. Together with Charles Wyplosz he has authored the textbook Macroeconomics: A European Text (Oxford University Press, 1993). A fourth edition was published in 2005. He is a research fellow at the Centre ofEconomic Policy Research (CEPR) London, Institut der Zukunft der Arbeit (IZA) Bonn, and Center for Economic Studies (CES) Munich.Francis Kramarz is the Head of the Research Department at CREST-INSEE, the research branch of the French Statistical Institute. He is also an associate professor at Ecole Polytechnique and a research fellow of CEPR (London) and of IZA. He is an associate editor of the Journal of the European Economic Association and Labour Economics. He has been nominated by the French Prime Minister at the recently instituted Conseil d'Orientation de l'Emploi as a qualified (expert) member.