Competing to belong and working to pay for it: a socioeconomic model of the link between productivity and work-life balance

Dimitry Rtischev

International Review of Economics, 2020, vol. 67, issue 4, No 6, 533-548

Abstract: Abstract I model and simulate an increasingly productive labor economy in which heterogeneous agents choose how much to work, how much to consume, and where to belong. The agents like to belong to “clubs” (e.g., neighborhoods, schools, workplaces) which are formed, quality-ranked, and priced endogenously. I examine the effect of productivity gains, paid out either through wage hikes or universal income grants, on club prices, leisure time, and consumption. I find that income grants are more prone than wage hikes to be dissipated in the bidding to join the “better” clubs. The findings imply that socioeconomic competition channeled through market institutions may hinder the translation of productivity growth into better work-life balance.

Keywords: Socioeconomic competition; Working time; Leisure; Universal basic income; Clubs; Work-life balance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D71 J22 O40 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s12232-020-00357-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:inrvec:v:67:y:2020:i:4:d:10.1007_s12232-020-00357-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cy/journal/12232/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s12232-020-00357-7

Access Statistics for this article

International Review of Economics is currently edited by Luigino Bruni

More articles in International Review of Economics from Springer, Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().