{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","uuid":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","normalized_title":"timeforthingslaborleisureandtheriseofmassconsumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","isbns":["9780674250529","9780674250536","9780674979512"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":355,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Time%20for%20Things%20Labor%2C%20Leisure%2C%20and%20the%20Rise%20of%20Mass%20Consumption","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/search"},"page":{"printed_page":288,"pdf_page":296,"physical_index":296,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"2882f2e5c78e074ec77b3b4d6cfc1795190b3878bd76f0fe2f90686c12f6dbc2"},"chapter":"FOR","content":"c h a pt e r 3 : e mpi r i c a l p a t t e r n i n t h e u n i t e d st a t e s\n\n1. Becker (1965, p. 507), in any case, does at least admit that “the productivity of working time has probably advanced more than that of consumption time, if only because of familiar reasons associated with the division of labor and economies of scale.” But if this is so—if it takes increasingly less time to produce the equipment used to generate utility, while the time it takes to use that equipment to generate that utility has grown relatively more slowly—why then does work time not fall at a rate closer to the rate at which productivity is increasing?\n\n2. There are eforts to incorporate changing product quality in measures of productivity by coming up with hedonic price indexes, for example to register the added value of faster processors in ICT. However, there are serious dificulties with operationalizing hedonic pricing (Block 1990).\n\n3. Multifactor productivity (MFP) is productivity net of changes in labor and capital inputs. The idea behind MFP is to isolate that part of productivity that is not accounted for by increasing capital per worker (“capital deepening”) or by changes in the composition of the labor force (which afects its average quality). MFP is calculated, roughly speaking, by subtracting percent changes in inputs of labor and capital from percent changes in output. If the calculation yields a residual, this is taken to represent the contribution of technical improvements to productivity.\n\n4. Angus Maddison (2001) breaks down annual improvements in per hour output (combined across all economic activities) in the long twentieth century as follows: 1870–1913, 1.92 percent; 1913–1950, 2.48 percent; 1950–1973, 2.77 percent; 1973–1998, 1.74 percent. The project of this book is to inquire into what was done with increasing productivity regardless of whether its source is capital accumulation, compositional change in the labor force, or exogenous factors such as technical improvements to the production process. My question is: Given ongoing improvements over the course of the twentieth century in productivity per hour of labor from whatever source, why have work hours not been reduced to a greater extent than has been the case? For the purposes of answering this question, the blunter measure of labor productivity is more relevant than multifactor productivity, and the most relevant sector is manufacturing, since it was organized workers in that sector who pressed hard up until the Second World War for reductions in the working week and largely let the issue drop in the postwar period.\n\n5. According to the “Baumol thesis,” services are intrinsically less amenable to improvements in productivity, and this accounts for the lag in services productivity compared to manufacturing productivity. However, Zvi Griliches argues that the diference between productivity rates in these two sectors is largely explained by measurement issues (Baumol and Bowen 1966; Griliches 1992).\n\n6. The shift in the labor force toward services to some degree accounts for the apparent slowdown in productivity growth in the last third of the twentieth century.\n\n288\n\nNotes to Pages 43–45","previous_page":287,"next_page":289}