The labor supply of self-employed workers: The choice of working hours in worker co-ops

Workers in cooperatives are self-employed workers and, if they resemble employees in conventional workplaces, they care about the length of their working hours. In this paper, their choice of hours is characterized as a conventional labor supply decision and a familiar hours-wage relationship is derived. This is estimated using mill-year observations on the plywood co-ops in the Pacific Northwest. The results are compared with those from the work behavior of other self-employed workers and with working hours in capitalist plywood mills.