A Model of the Trends in Hours

Guillaume Vandenbroucke

No 05.40, IEPR Working Papers from Institute of Economic Policy Research (IEPR)

Abstract: During the first half of the 20th century the workweek in the United States declined, and the distribution of hours across wage deciles narrowed. At the same time, the distribution of wages narrowed too. The hypothesis proposed is (i) Households have access to an increasing number of leisure activities which enhance the value of non-market time; (ii) The rise of education accounts for the narrowing of the wage and hours distributions. Such mechanisms, embedded into a neoclassical growth model, quantitatively account for the observations. The rise in wages is the main contributor to the decline in hours. The decline in the price of leisure goods is second in importance, yet its contribution is large.

Keywords: Hours worked; leisure; home production; technological progress (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 J22 O11 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2005-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge, nep-lab and nep-mac
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Working Paper: A Model of the Trends in Hours (2006)
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