Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T07:46:33.506Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

LABOR HOURS IN THE UNITED STATES AND EUROPE: THE ROLE OF DIFFERENT LEISURE PREFERENCES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Yishay David Maoz
Yishay David Maoz*
Affiliation:
The Open University of Israel
*
Address correspondence to: Yishay D. Maoz, Department of Management and Economics, The Open University of Israel, 1 University Road, Raanana 43107, Israel; e-mail: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Since 1900, annual working hours per worker have been generally declining in the United States and in the main European economies. During this simultaneous decline the Europeans initially worked fewer hours than their American counterparts, worked more than the Americans starting in the early 1930s, and once again worked less than the American from the early 1970s on. Using a two-country model, this article argues that this dynamic pattern can be brought about by differences in the valuation of leisure by individuals in the compared economies.

Keywords

Working HoursEconomic Growth
Type
Articles
Information
Macroeconomic Dynamics , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , April 2010 , pp. 231 - 241
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Alesina, Alberto, Glaeser, Edward, and Sacerdote, Bruce (2005) Work and Leisure in the U.S. and Europe—Why So different? Discussion Paper 2068, Harvard Institute of Economic Research.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blanchard, Olivier (2004) The economic future of Europe. Journal of Economic Perspectives 18, 3–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cazzavillan, Guido and Pintus, Patrick A. (2004) Robustness of multiple equilibria in OLG economies. Review of Economic Dynamics 7, 456–475.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duranton, Gilles (2001) Endogenous labor supply, growth and overlapping generations. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 44, 295–314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fanti, Luciano and Spataro, Luca (2006) Endogenous labor supply in Diamond's (1965) OLG model: A reconsideration of the debt role. Journal of Macroeconomics 28, 428–438.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freeman, Richard B. and Schettkat, Ronald (2005) Marketization of household production and the EU–US gap in work. Economic Policy 41, 7–50.Google Scholar
Galor, Oded and Weil, David N. (2000) Population, technology, and growth: From Malthusian stagnation to the demographic transition and beyond. American Economic Review 90, 806–828.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldin, Claudia (2001) The human-capital century and American leadership: Virtues of the past. Journal of Economic History 61: 263–292.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hazan, Moshe and Zoabi, Hosny (2006) Does longevity cause growth? A theoretical critique. Journal of Economic Growth 11, 363–376.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huberman, Michael and Minns, Chris (2007) The times they are not changin’: Days and hours of work in Old and New Worlds, 1870–2000. Explorations in Economic History 44, 538–567.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maddison, Angus (2006). The World Economy. Paris: OECD Publishing.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moav, Omer (2005) Cheap children and the persistence of poverty. Economic Journal 115, 88–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nourry, Carine and Venditti, Alain (2006). Overlapping generations model with endogenous labor supply: General formulation. Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications 128 (2), 355–377.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olovsson, Conny (2009) Why do Europeans work so little? International Economic Review 50, 39–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prescott, Edward C. (2004) Why do Americans work so much more than Europeans? Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Quarterly Review 28, 2–13.Google Scholar
Ragan, Kelly S. (2005) Taxes, Transfers, and Time Use: Fiscal Policy in a Model with Household Production. Working paper, University of Chicago.Google Scholar
Reichlin, Pietro (1986) Equilibrium cycles in an overlapping generations economy with production. Journal of Economic Theory 40, 89–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rogerson, Richard (2008) Structural transformation and the deterioration of European labor market outcomes. Journal of Political Economy 116, 235–259.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weil, David N. (2005). Economic Growth. Boston: Addison–Wesley.Google Scholar