IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/6054.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Less of a Luxury: The Rise of Recreation since 1888

Author

Listed:
  • Dora L. Costa

Abstract

I show that recreation has become much more egalitarian over the last hundred years by estimating recreational expenditure elasticities in 1888-1890, 1917-1919, 1935-1936, 1972-1973, and 1991. I find that expenditure elasticities have fallen from around two at the beginning of the century to slightly more than one today and attribute this decline to rising incomes, declines in the price of recreation, and investment in public recreational goods. My findings have implications for trends in the well-being of the poor relative to the rich and for long-term trends" in work hours and labor force participation rates.

Suggested Citation

  • Dora L. Costa, 1997. "Less of a Luxury: The Rise of Recreation since 1888," NBER Working Papers 6054, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:6054
    Note: DAE LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w6054.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jerry A. Hausman, 1996. "Valuation of New Goods under Perfect and Imperfect Competition," NBER Chapters, in: The Economics of New Goods, pages 207-248, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Hausman, J. A. & Newey, W. K. & Powell, J. L., 1995. "Nonlinear errors in variables Estimation of some Engel curves," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 205-233, January.
    3. Michael Abbott & Orley Ashenfelter, 1976. "Labour Supply, Commodity Demand and the Allocation of Time," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 43(3), pages 389-411.
    4. Rosen, Sherwin, 1981. "The Economics of Superstars," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(5), pages 845-858, December.
    5. Levy, Frank & Murnane, Richard J, 1992. "U.S. Earnings Levels and Earnings Inequality: A Review of Recent Trends and Proposed Explanations," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 30(3), pages 1333-1381, September.
    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. Thomas Lemieux, 2008. "The changing nature of wage inequality," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 21(1), pages 21-48, January.
    2. Dora L. Costa, 1999. "American Living Standards: Evidence from Recreational Expenditures," NBER Working Papers 7148, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Robert H. Frank & Philip J. Cook, 2013. "Winner-Take-All Markets," Studies in Microeconomics, , vol. 1(2), pages 131-154, December.
    4. Nahuis, R., 1997. "On Globalisation, Trade and Wages," Other publications TiSEM f96f2ab3-c66f-438f-8a53-2, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    5. Chris Belfield & Richard Blundell & Jonathan Cribb & Andrew Hood & Robert Joyce, 2017. "Two Decades of Income Inequality in Britain: The Role of Wages, Household Earnings and Redistribution," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 84(334), pages 157-179, April.
    6. George E. Johnson, 1997. "Changes in Earnings Inequality: The Role of Demand Shifts," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 11(2), pages 41-54, Spring.
    7. Guo, Ningning, 2022. "Hollowing out of opportunity: Automation technology and intergenerational mobility in the United States," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    8. Jo Michell, 2014. "Factors generating and transmitting the financial crisis; Functional distribution of income," Working papers wpaper41, Financialisation, Economy, Society & Sustainable Development (FESSUD) Project.
    9. Nahuis, R., 1997. "On Globalisation, Trade and Wages," Other publications TiSEM f96f2ab3-c66f-438f-8a53-2, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    10. Leye Li & Louise Yi Lu & Dongyue Wang, 2022. "External labour market competitions and stock price crash risk: evidence from exposures to competitor CEOs’ award‐winning events," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 62(S1), pages 1421-1460, April.
    11. Donna, Javier D. & Pereira, Pedro & Trindade, Andre & Yoshida, Renan C., 2020. "Direct-to-Consumer Sales by Manufacturers and Bargaining," MPRA Paper 105773, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Sudip Datta & Mai Iskandar-Datta, 2014. "Upper-echelon executive human capital and compensation: Generalist vs specialist skills," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(12), pages 1853-1866, December.
    13. Luis Garicano & Thomas N. Hubbard, 2016. "The Returns to Knowledge Hierarchies," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 32(4), pages 653-684.
    14. Rey, Sergio, 2015. "Bells in Space: The Spatial Dynamics of US Interpersonal and Interregional Income Inequality," MPRA Paper 69482, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Katsiaryna Bardos & Steven E. Kozlowski & Michael R. Puleo, 2021. "Entrenchment or efficiency? CEO‐to‐employee pay ratio and the cost of debt," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 56(3), pages 511-533, August.
    16. Battisti, Michele & Gatto, Massimo Del & Parmeter, Christopher F., 2022. "Skill-biased technical change and labor market inefficiency," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    17. Pascal Petit, 2010. "Innovation and Services: On Biases and Beyond," Chapters, in: Faïz Gallouj & Faridah Djellal (ed.), The Handbook of Innovation and Services, chapter 17, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    18. Lurkin, Virginie & Garrow, Laurie A. & Higgins, Matthew J. & Newman, Jeffrey P. & Schyns, Michael, 2017. "Accounting for price endogeneity in airline itinerary choice models: An application to Continental U.S. markets," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 228-246.
    19. Mohammed SHARIF, 2000. "Inverted “S”—The complete neoclassical labour-supply function," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 139(4), pages 409-435, December.
    20. Till Treeck, 2014. "Did Inequality Cause The U.S. Financial Crisis?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(3), pages 421-448, July.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • N11 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - U.S.; Canada: Pre-1913

    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:6054. 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.