Keeping in touch – A benefit of public holidays using time use diary data

Joachim Merz and Lars Osberg

electronic International Journal of Time Use Research, 2009, vol. 6, issue 1, 130-166

Abstract: This paper argues that public holidays facilitate the co-ordination of leisure time but do not constrain the annual amount of leisure. Public holidays therefore have benefits both in the utility of leisure on holidays and (by enabling people to maintain social contacts more easily) in increasing the utility of leisure on normal weekdays and weekends. The paper uses the variation in public holidays across German Länder based on more than 37.000 individual diary data of the actual German Time Use Survey of 2001-02 to illustrate the positive association between more public holidays and social life on normal weekdays and weekends. These benefits are additional to the other, direct benefits of public holidays.

Keywords: Public holidays; social contacts; social leisure time; time allocation; time use diaries; German Time Budget Survey 2001/02 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H40 I31 J22 Z31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www2.leuphana.de/ffb/eijtur/pdf/volumes/eIJTUR-6-1.pdf#page=131 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:leu:journl:2009:vol6:issue1:p130-166

Access Statistics for this article

electronic International Journal of Time Use Research is currently edited by Joachim Merz, Jonathan Gershuny and Andrew S. Harvey

More articles in electronic International Journal of Time Use Research from Research Institute on Professions (Forschungsinstitut Freie Berufe (FFB)) and The International Association for Time Use Research (IATUR) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Merz ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).