The Decline of Drudgery and the Paradox of Hard Work

Brendan Epstein and Miles Kimball

No 29041, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We develop a theory focusing on general equilibrium and long-run macroeconomic consequences of trends in job utility—the process benefits and costs of work. Given secular increases in job utility, work hours can remain approximately constant over time even if the income effect of higher wages on labor supply exceeds the substitution effect. Secular improvements in job utility can be substantial relative to welfare gains from ordinary technological progress. These two implications are connected by an equation flowing from optimal hours choices: improvements in job utility that have a significant effect on labor supply tend to have large welfare effects.

JEL-codes: J22 J24 J28 J31 O4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge, nep-isf, nep-lma, nep-mac and nep-upt
Note: DAE EFG LS
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w29041.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Decline of Drudgery and the Paradox of Hard Work (2014)
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:nbr:nberwo:29041

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w29041

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().