Has leisure increased over the last century? Standard measures of hours worked suggest that it has. In this paper, we develop a comprehensive measure of non-leisure hours that includes market work, home production, commuting and schooling for the last 105 years. We also present empirical and...

We use micro data from the European Social Survey to investigate the impact of “culture of leisure” and taxes on labor force participation and hours worked of second-generation immigrants who reside in 26 European countries. These individuals are born in Europe, and they have been exposed to...

I analyze two extensions to the standard model of life cycle labor supply that feature operative choices along both the intensive and extensive margin. The first assumes that individuals face different continuous wage-hours schedules. The second assumes that all work must be coordinated across...

This study examines racial, ethnic and gender differentials in physical activity. Individuals engage in physical activity during leisure-time and also during in many other activities such as walking to work, home maintenance, shopping and child care. Physical activity also occurs on the job is...

Prior to July 2009, salaries of the members of the European Parliament were paid by their home country and there were substantial salary differences between parliamentarians representing different EU countries. Starting in July 2009, the salary of each member of the Parliament is pegged to 38.5%...

This paper exploits the richness and large sample size of the Gallup/Healthways US daily poll to illustrate significant differences in the dynamics of two key measures of subjective well-being: emotions and life evaluations. We find that there is no day-of-week effect for life evaluations,...

Recent research has documented that income inequality in the United States has increased dramatically over the prior three decades. There has been less of a consensus, however, on whether the increase in income inequality was matched by an equally large increase in consumption inequality. Most...

This paper investigates whether demand-side market pressure explains colleges' decisions to provide consumption amenities to their students. We estimate a discrete choice model of college demand using micro data from the high school classes of 1992 and 2004, matched to extensive information on...

In this paper we analyze income tax design in a two member household labor supply model where time spent on consumption together by the two household members is valued differently from time spent apart. We treat consumption as a non excludable public good to members of the household; one example...

Work requirements in means-tested transfer programs have grown in importance in the U.S. and in some other countries. The theoretical literature which considers their possible optimality generally operates within a traditional welfarist framework where some function of the utility of the poor is...