TheRedArchive

~ archived since 2018 ~

During a recession, how do people spend all the extra time they would have been working?

Eric Barker
August 13, 2011

Half of it goes to sleep, TV and leisure:

We use data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), covering both the recent recession and the pre-recessionary period, to explore how foregone market work hours are allocated to other activities over the business cycle. Given the short time series, it is hard to distinguish business cycle effects from low frequency trends by simply comparing time spent on a given category prior to the recession with time spent on that category during the recession. Instead, we identify the business cycle effects on time use using cross state variation with respect to the severity of the recessions. We find that roughly 30% to 40% of the foregone market work hours are allocated to increased home production. Additionally, 30% of the foregone hours are allocated to increased sleep time and increased television watching. Other leisure activities absorb 20% of the foregone market work hours. We use our evidence from the ATUS to calibrate and test the predictions of workhorse macroeconomic models with home production. We show that the quantitative implications of these models regarding the allocation of time over the business cycle matches reasonably well the actual behavior of households.

Source: “Time Use During Recessions” from NBER Working Paper No. 17259

TheRedArchive is an archive of Red Pill content, including various subreddits and blogs. This post has been archived from the blog bakadesuyo.

bakadesuyo archive

Download the post

Want to save the post for offline use on your device? Choose one of the download options below:

Post Information
Title During a recession, how do people spend all the extra time they would have been working?
Author Eric Barker
Date August 13, 2011 3:14 PM UTC (12 years ago)
Blog bakadesuyo
Archive Link https://theredarchive.com/blog/bakadesuyo/during-a-recession-how-do-people-spend-all-the.15429
https://theredarchive.com/blog/15429
Original Link https://www.bakadesuyo.com/2011/08/during-a-recession-how-do-people-spend-all-th/
You can kill a man, but you can't kill an idea.

© TheRedArchive 2024. All rights reserved.
created by /u/dream-hunter