Economics of Work and Play

In 1930 Keynes predicted a 15-hour work week by the 21st century because he expected we would be at the foothills of the "economic promised land." He was more than right about technological progress and staggering productivity growth –– but dead wrong about the role work would play in our lives. Here we are, working 40+ hour weeks in mostly drab jobs, often under precarious employment conditions. 

This course is centered on the concept of "work." The broad objectives of the course are: first, to facilitate a critical understanding of the meaning and significance of work for human life; second, to develop a set of theoretical and analytical tools to dissect and analyze specific work arrangements that we in fact encounter in the real world; and third, and perhaps more importantly, to imagine alternative arrangements of work life that might be better suited for human flourishing. 

We begin with some of the central ideas in modern labor economics, including definition of work, labor supply and demand, market mechanisms of wage determination, human capital theory and incentive-based management. We then assess the underlying assumptions implied in this body of knowledge –– for example, from labor as input in production to profit maximization and utility maximization based on stable consumer preferences over material goods and services and leisure time. The springboard for this critical analysis is a set of alternative viewpoints on what constitutes "work activity" from various other academic disciplines including philosophy, anthropology, linguistics and psychology. These readings, with their origins in different historical and intellectual settings and founded on different conceptions of human nature, stand in sharp contrast to this neoclassical economic view of "man" and "work.”

The course will have a two-part structure. The first half of the course will consist of a series of lectures on modern labor economic models emphasizing the assumptions, theories and labor market “facts” that these models are designed to explain. The second half of the course will shift to a more discussion-based format that is better suited to a close "exegesis" of the required texts as critique of this neoclassical paradigm of work.