Allocating Time: Individuals' Technologies, Household Technology, Perfect Substitutes, and Specialization

Robert A. Pollak

NBER Working Paper No. 17529
Issued in October 2011

---- Acknowledgements -----

This is the first of two theoretical papers on household time allocation; the second paper, Pollak (2012), discusses the conditions, other than perfect substitutes, under which efficiency implies specialization. Preliminary versions of this paper were presented at the PAA in New York, SOLE in Chicago, IZA in Bonn, ESPE in Chicago, the AEA in New Orleans, the University of Missouri, Duke University, Collegio Carlo Alberto in Torino, the University of Cergy-Pontoise, the University of Chicago, Mount Holyoke College, Cornell, UCLA, and the University of Maryland conference on International Perspectives on Time Use. I am grateful to Paula England, Shelly Lundberg, Mark Rosenzweig, Leslie Stratton, Yoram Weiss, and Randy Wright for conversations and comments, to Massimo Marinacci and Luigi Montrucchio for help proving a crucial result, and to two anonymous referees for their perceptive comments. I am grateful to the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development, National Institutes of Health (RO1HD056207-01A2) for financial support. I alone am responsible for the views expressed. The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

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