What are you doing ce soir?
This academic paper, via Brad De Long, tries to explain the difference in European and US work hours and holidays. It notes that explanations that rely on historical differences such as religion fail to explain why Europeans worked more hours until the 1960s, and fewer afterwards. They also believe that marginal tax rates could not explain enough of the change. Essentially their argument is that it is a voluntary decision on behalf of Europeans, but one for which the catalyst was restrictive labour market practices from the early 1970s. The neat trick is the argument that their are "social multipliers" to leisure, in the form of it is better for one to be on holiday when others are. THus longer holidays become increasingly desired.What interested me more however was the implications these externalities have for transport. It is often suggested (as Chris did the other week) that to lower transport congestion people shold stagger their work hours. Yet as the authors of the above paper note, most people in the world work between 9 and 5/6 despite the many benefits of not doing so. Again the suggestion is because of "social multipliers". If this is right, and it does make sense, then peak-time pricing may have to be so high to have an impact that it is political unacceptable.
posted by Matthew @ 7/05/2005 12:02:00 PM
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