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"In this paper we make use of the panel aspects of the German GSOEP, the Swedish HUS and the British BHPS data...[to analyze] labor force transitions triggered by child births of different birth orders.... We find that German and British women have even higher full-time labor force participation than Swedish women 12 months before the birth of the first child. The difference is more pronounced for second and third births than for first births. We suggest that these differences are caused by different family policy regimes where Germany can be characterized as a breadwinner regime and Sweden a regime oriented towards equal role sharing of father and mother. Our results on determinants of being in the labor force both after and before the birth of a child as well as determinants of the tempo of entering the labor force after birth show that women's own human capital is important both in Germany and Great Britain, whereas in Sweden also less educated women have entered the labor force by the time the child is 2 years old."

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This paper aims to clarify the relationship between telework and the actual time employees put into their jobs. One of the reported threats to teleworkers’ personal lives is that in order to finish their work, they not only use up saved commuting time, but also part of their non-working hours, even to the extent of becoming workaholics. Recent empirical analyses show that teleworkers do seem to work longer hours than non-teleworkers. Yet there is an interesting observation to be made: teleworkers are not found to work longer hours when compared with employees who are given the teleworking option but not taking it. One might hypothesise, therefore, that there might be other factors accounting for the longer working hours of teleworkers (and of “teleworkable” job-holders), rather than teleworking as such. For that reason, the effect of teleworking on working hours was controlled for job and pay system characteristics. In line with expectations, salaried work, higher wages and some fringe benefits accounted for longer hours, and telework did not. Therefore, telework may be rightly used as an HRM-tool to attract and/or retain (scarce) personnel, for it allows employees to save commuting time and, consequently, contributes to a better work-home balance.

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