We are so incredibly grateful for the kind and inspiring comments from ICEA conference "Gender Inequality" (a part of After the Pandemic conference series). We presented two of our most recent studies on working time flexibility.

In the first of these new papers, we leverage the flexibility enactment theory to study empirically the link between working arrangements and job satisfaction. We provide novel insights on the match between the individual inclination to work in non-standard working arrangements and the factual conditions of employment. We thus reconcile the earlier literature, which found both positive and negative effects of non-standard employment on job satisfaction. Using data from the European Working Conditions Survey we characterize the extent of mismatch between individual inclination and factual working arrangements. We provide several novel results. First, the extent of mismatch is substantial and reallocating workers between jobs could substantially boost overall job satisfaction in European countries. Second, the mismatch more frequently plagues women and parents. Finally, we demonstrate that the extent of mismatch is heterogeneous across countries, which shows that one-size-fits-all policies are not likely to maximize the happiness of workers, whether flexibility is increased or reduced.

In the second of these papers, we study the role of autonomy to decide about the working schedule in determining wages. Deciding about wages and working conditions is a key element of employer-employee relations. We zoom in on these decisions, manipulating the working time arrangements. Building on the existing literature, we theorize that the workers who depart further away from the notion of an  ideal worker experience wage penalties, whereas becoming more congruent with that model implies wage increases. We provide a framed field experiment to empirically verify the extent to which working time flexibility should be reflected in wages. We operationalize working time flexibility as discretion over starting and ending times, which can be exerted by the employer or by the employee. We also provide a gender context.