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This paper examines the phenomenon of uncompensated long hours in jobs with pro‐social characteristics and presents evidence that long‐hour wage premiums and occupational social value are substitutes in compensating salaried workers who supply hours exceeding the standard working week. I show that the social value of an occupation—in particular the degree to which jobs involve helping or providing service to others—is inversely related to long‐hour pay. Allowing for heterogeneity in the degree to which workers value their job's helping orientation lets me explore how gender differences in employees’ attitudes toward pro‐social behaviour can explain some of the observed occupational sorting trends and gender differences in long‐hour compensation. Women tend to be more strongly drawn to ‘helping’ occupations and at the same time receive lower long‐hour premiums in these jobs relative to men. I offer a theoretical framework to rationalize the empirical trends.

Asking students to come to class prepared is quite common in undergraduate and graduate education. We use a quasiexperimental design to assess whether requiring undergraduate students in an introductory course to review prior to lecture the material that will be taught in class enhances their understanding of key concepts. We find that requiring rather than recommending preparation before class increases exam scores by about a quarter of a standard deviation, or roughly a third of a letter grade, for students in the second and third quartiles of the ability distribution but has little impact on very high‐ or low‐ability students. We also estimate local average treatment effects, from which we draw a similar conclusion: reviewing the material before lecture benefits students in the middle of the ability distribution but has essentially no impact on the top and bottom quartiles.