Love's labor's lost? the disutility of work and work avoidance in the economic analysis of labor supply

David Spencer

Review of Social Economy, 2003, vol. 61, issue 2, 235-250

Abstract: This paper explores the origins and evolution of the concept of the disutility of work. The original formulation of this concept developed by Stanley Jevons and by Alfred Marshall recognizes the variability of work motives stressing the effects of both the quantity and quality of work on labor supply. Subsequent writers, notably Lionel Robbins, and later Gary Becker, focus on the opportunity cost of work time, to the neglect of the content of work. These writers lose sight of the influence of the nature of work on the supply of labor. Contemporary research on the economics of labor supply, while accepting the presence of agency problems surrounding the enforcement of the labor contract, continues to consign the determinants of work motives to a black box. The new emphasis on the problem of “shirking” by workers, in particular, offers an unbalanced treatment of the causes and consequences of work resistance.

Keywords: labor supply; effort; shirking; work motivation; work avoidance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0034676032000098237 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:rsocec:v:61:y:2003:i:2:p:235-250

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RRSE20

DOI: 10.1080/0034676032000098237

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Social Economy is currently edited by Wilfred Dolfsma and John Davis

More articles in Review of Social Economy from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().