Hours Worked: Long-Run Trends / Jeremy Greenwood, Guillaume Vandenbroucke.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Greenwood, Jeremy.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Vandenbroucke, Guillaume.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w11629.

NBER working paper series no. w11629

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Hours Worked

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2005.

Summary:

For 200 years the average number of hours worked per worker declined, both in the market place

and at home. Technological progress is the engine of such transformation. Three mechanisms are

stressed:

(i) The rise in real wages and its corresponding wealth effect;

(ii) The enhanced value of time off from work, due to the advent of time-using leisure goods;

(iii) The reduced need for housework, due to the introduction of time-saving appliances.

These mechanisms are incorporated into a model of household production. The notion of Edgeworth-Pareto complementarity/substitutability is key to the analysis. Numerical examples link theory and data.

This note has been prepared for The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd edition, edited

by Lawrence E. Blume and Steven N. Durlauf (London: Palgrave Macmillan).

Notes:

Print version record

September 2005.