Towards a general equilibrium theory of allocation of time for the digital revolution era

Abstract

The Digital Revolution we are witnessing has started a new era in modern societies and economies. Time inputs, whether these are from human beings and non-human, electronical or mechanical devices are increasingly more important, especially –but not uniquely– in most advanced economies and societies. Existing economic theory strives to accommodate time inputs into mainstream economic theory. This paper contributes to the existing literature on time allocation theoretical models by suggesting a general equilibrium framework likely to respond to some existing challenges in modern economies. In the general equilibrium modelling process, some improvements are made to time allocation models from the consumer side which concern the inclusion of non-human time inputs and multitasking, and a novel development on a producer theory of allocation of time is designed to determine the underpinnings of a computationally tractable general equilibrium theory of allocation of time. Both the solution and usefulness of this work will require the help of cutting-edge computational techniques in future work.