Cheap Thrills: the Price of Leisure and the Global Decline in Work Hours

75 Pages Posted: 24 Sep 2020 Last revised: 4 Nov 2022

See all articles by Alexandr Kopytov

Alexandr Kopytov

The University of Hong Kong - Faculty of Business and Economics

Nikolai L. Roussanov

University of Pennsylvania - The Wharton School; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Mathieu Taschereau-Dumouchel

Cornell University - Department of Economics

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Date Written: November 3, 2022

Abstract

Recreation prices and hours worked have both fallen over the last century. We construct a
macroeconomic model with general preferences that allows for trending recreation prices, wages,
and work hours along a balanced-growth path. Estimating the model using aggregate data from
OECD countries, we find that the fall in recreation prices can explain a large fraction of the
decline in hours. We also use our model to show that the diverging prices of the recreation
bundles consumed by different demographic groups can account for much of the increase in
leisure inequality observed in the United States over the last decades.

JEL Classification: E24, J22

Suggested Citation

Kopytov, Alexandr and Roussanov, Nikolai L. and Taschereau-Dumouchel, Mathieu, Cheap Thrills: the Price of Leisure and the Global Decline in Work Hours (November 3, 2022). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3660312 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3660312

Alexandr Kopytov (Contact Author)

The University of Hong Kong - Faculty of Business and Economics ( email )

Pokfulam Road
Hong Kong
China

Nikolai L. Roussanov

University of Pennsylvania - The Wharton School ( email )

3641 Locust Walk
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6365
United States

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

Mathieu Taschereau-Dumouchel

Cornell University - Department of Economics ( email )

414 Uris Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853-7601
United States

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