IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/0184.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Theory of the Production and Allocation of Effort

Author

Listed:
  • Gary S. Becker

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze systematically the production of effort and its allocation among different market and non-market sectors. I believe that this analysis can explain much of the variation in earnings that is not explained by human capital. The first section introduces the material. The next section develops the basic theoretical analysis of the production and allocation of effort by a free person. Section III applies this analysis to the value placed on time a1 located to the non-market sector, the effect of hours worked on fatigue and earnings, life cycle variations-in earnings and hours worked, investment in health, and the effect of marriage on the earnings and health of men and women. Section IV considers worker effort from the view point of firms, and shows how various characteristics of firms determine the wage rates offered and the effort supplied by their workers. Section V analyzes the production and allocation of effort by slaves, and derives "expropriation rates'' and other implications about the treatment of slaves .

Suggested Citation

  • Gary S. Becker, 1977. "A Theory of the Production and Allocation of Effort," NBER Working Papers 0184, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:0184
    Note: PR
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w0184.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Akogun, Oladele & Dillon, Andrew & Friedman, Jed & Prasann, Ashesh & Serneels, Pieter, 2017. "Productivity and Health: Alternative Productivity Measures using Physical Activity," 2017 Annual Meeting, July 30-August 1, Chicago, Illinois 258380, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    2. Akogun, Oladele & Dillon, Andrew & Friedman, Jed & Prasann, Ashesh & Serneels, Pieter, 2017. "Productivity and Health: Alternative Productivity Estimates Using Physical Activity," IZA Discussion Papers 11115, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Jed Friedman & Isis Gaddis & Talip Kilic & Antonio Martuscelli & Amparo Palacios-Lopez & Alberto Zezza, 2023. "The Distribution of Effort: Physical Activity, Gender Roles, and Bargaining Power in an Agrarian Setting," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 37(1), pages 93-111.
    4. Zsolt Becsi, 2001. "Longevity and the Life Cycle," Departmental Working Papers 2001-12, Department of Economics, Louisiana State University.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:0184. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.