IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/21713.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Work and Consumption in an Era of Unbalanced Technological Advance

Author

Listed:
  • Benjamin M. Friedman

Abstract

Keynes’s “Grandchildren” essay famously predicted both a rapid increase in productivity and a sharp shrinkage of the workweek – to fifteen hours – over the century from 1930. Keynes was right (so far) about output per capita, but wrong about the workweek. The key reason is that he failed to allow for changing distribution. With widening inequality, median income (and therefore the income of most families) has risen, and is now rising, much more slowly than he anticipated. The failure of the workweek to shrink as he predicted follows. Other factors, including habit formation, socially induced consumption preferences, and network effects are part of the story too. Combining the analysis of Keynes, Meade and Galbraith suggests a way forward for economic policy under the prevailing circumstances.

Suggested Citation

  • Benjamin M. Friedman, 2015. "Work and Consumption in an Era of Unbalanced Technological Advance," NBER Working Papers 21713, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:21713
    Note: ME
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w21713.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Vandenbroucke, Guillaume, 2009. "Trends in hours: The U.S. from 1900 to 1950," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 237-249, January.
    2. Brent Neiman, 2014. "The Global Decline of the Labor Share," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 129(1), pages 61-103.
    3. John Y. Campbell & John Cochrane, 1999. "Force of Habit: A Consumption-Based Explanation of Aggregate Stock Market Behavior," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(2), pages 205-251, April.
    4. repec:oup:qjecon:v:129:y:2013:i:1:p:61-103 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Frey, Carl Benedikt & Osborne, Michael A., 2017. "The future of employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation?," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 254-280.
    6. Alicia H. Munnell & Matthew S. Rutledge & Anthony Webb, 2014. "Are Retirees Falling Short? Reconciling the Conflicting Evidence," Working Papers, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College wp2014-16, Center for Retirement Research.
    7. Dirk Krueger & Fabrizio Perri, 2006. "Does Income Inequality Lead to Consumption Inequality? Evidence and Theory -super-1," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 73(1), pages 163-193.
    8. Constantinides, George M, 1990. "Habit Formation: A Resolution of the Equity Premium Puzzle," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(3), pages 519-543, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Benjamin M. Friedman, 2017. "Work and consumption in an era of unbalanced technological advance," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 221-237, April.
    2. John Y. Campbell, 2013. "Comment on "Shocks and Crashes"," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2013, Volume 28, pages 355-366, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Holger Kraft & Claus Munk & Frank Thomas Seifried & Sebastian Wagner, 2017. "Consumption habits and humps," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 64(2), pages 305-330, August.
    4. Huang-Meier, Winifred & Freeman, Mark C., 2015. "Aggregate dividends and consumption smoothing," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 324-335.
    5. Basso, Henrique S. & Jimeno, Juan F., 2021. "From secular stagnation to robocalypse? Implications of demographic and technological changes," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 833-847.
    6. He, Yong, 2018. "Can the visible and invisible hands coexist in land pricing?," MPRA Paper 88770, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Kris Jacobs, 2001. "Estimating Nonseparable Preference Specifications for Asset Market Participants," CIRANO Working Papers 2001s-12, CIRANO.
    8. Laurent E. Calvet & Paolo Sodini, 2014. "Twin Picks: Disentangling the Determinants of Risk-Taking in Household Portfolios," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 69(2), pages 867-906, April.
    9. D. Carroll Christopher, 2000. "Risky Habits and the Marginal Propensity to Consume Output of Permanent Income, or, How Much Would a Permanent Tax Cut Boost Japanese Consumption?," International Economic Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(4), pages 1-40.
    10. Emilio Fernandez-Corugedo, 2004. "Consumption Theory," Handbooks, Centre for Central Banking Studies, Bank of England, number 23, April.
    11. Robert Östling & Erik Lindqvist & David Cesarini & Joseph Briggs, 2016. "Wealth, Portfolio Allocations, and Risk Preference," 2016 Meeting Papers 1089, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    12. Dario Cords & Klaus Prettner, 2022. "Technological unemployment revisited: automation in a search and matching framework [The future of work: meeting the global challenges of demographic change and automation]," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 74(1), pages 115-135.
    13. M Boschi & S d'Addona & A Goenka, 2012. "Testing external habits in an asset pricing model," CAMA Working Papers 2012-20, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    14. Fu, Qi & So, Jacky Yuk-Chow & Li, Xiaotong, 2024. "Stable paretian distribution, return generating processes and habit formation—The implication for equity premium puzzle," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    15. David J. Deming, 2017. "The Growing Importance of Social Skills in the Labor Market," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 132(4), pages 1593-1640.
    16. Binswanger, J., 2008. "A Simple Bounded-Rationality Life Cycle Model," Discussion Paper 2008-13, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    17. Rieger, Marc Oliver & Wang, Mei, 2012. "Can ambiguity aversion solve the equity premium puzzle? Survey evidence from international data," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 63-72.
    18. Wang, Qin & Ren, Yu & Zou, Yiheng, 2016. "Uninsured expense shocks and equity premia," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 64-74.
    19. Marc Oliver Rieger & Thorsten Hens & Mei Wang, 2013. "International Evidence on the Equity Premium Puzzle and Time Discounting," Multinational Finance Journal, Multinational Finance Journal, vol. 17(3-4), pages 149-163, September.
    20. Roger E. A. Farmer, 2018. "Pricing Assets in a Perpetual Youth Model," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 30, pages 106-124, October.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:21713. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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.