Time Allocation Decisions Research Articles

How do dual practitioners divide their time? The cases of three African capital cities

Health professionals dual practice has received increasing attention, particularly in the context of the universal health coverage movement. This paper explores the determinants of doctors' choices to become a dual practitioner and of dual practitioners' choices to allocate time to the private sector in the capital cities of Mozambique, Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde. The data are drawn from a survey conducted in 2012 among 329 physicians. We use a two-part model to analyse the decision of both public and private practitioners to become dual practitioners, and to allocate time between public and private sectors. We impute potential earnings in public and private practice by using nearest-neighbour propensity score matching.Our results show that hourly wage in the private sector, number of dependents, length of time as a physician, work outside city, and being a specialist with or without technology all have a positive association with the probability of being a dual physician, while number of dependents displays a negative sign. Level of salaries in the public sector are not associated with dual practice engagement, with important implications for attempts aimed at retaining professionals in the public sector through wage increases. As predicted by theory that recognises doctors' role in price setting, earnings rates are not significant predictors of private sector time allocation; personal characteristics of physicians appear more important, such as age, number of dependents, specialist without technology, specialist with technology, and three reasons for not working more hours in the private sector. Answers to questions about the factors that limit working hours in the private sector have significant predictive power, suggesting that type of employment in the private sector may be an underlying determinant of both dual practice engagement and time allocation decisions.

Time as a medium of reward in three social preference experiments

We use time, rather than money, as the salient component of subjects’ incentives in three workhorse experimental paradigms. The use of waiting time can be interpreted as a special type of real effort condition, in which it is particularly straightforward to achieve experimental control over incentives. The three experiments, commonly employed to study social preferences, are the dictator game, the ultimatum game and the trust game. All subjects in a session earn the same participation fee, but their choices affect the time at which they are permitted to leave the laboratory. Decisions that are associated with greater own payoff translate into the right to depart earlier. The modal proposal in both the dictator and ultimatum games is an equal split of the waiting time. In the trust game, there is substantial trust and reciprocity. Overall, social preferences are evident in time allocation decisions. We compare subjects’ decisions over time and money and find no significant differences in average decisions. The pattern of results suggests that results obtained in the laboratory with money as the medium of reward generalize to other reward media.

Time in eating and food preparation among single adults

We investigate factors affecting the duration of eating and food preparation among adults in single decision-maker households. Eating time is differentiated into primary and secondary eating time and further differentiated by location: at home vs. away from home. We construct a simple theoretical model, based on Becker’s household production approach, to motivate empirical equations for eating and food preparation time. Empirical analysis is performed using data from the 2006–2008 Eating and Health (EH) Module of the American Time Use Survey (ATUS). Higher food-at-home prices are found to be associated with more time in food preparation and primary eating at home. Higher fast food prices are associated with more time in food preparation and less time in primary eating at home. We conclude that food prices influence home production and time allocation decisions. We also find that low-income adults spend more time in food preparation and primary eating at home and are less likely to eat away from home than those with more income. The presence of children in the household is associated with more time in food preparation and less time in primary eating away from home. Public policies attempting to effect an increase in food preparation among low-income, single adult households with children may need to account for limited opportunities such households can have to acquire and prepare healthier foods when additional time is required.

Yield and allocation management in a continuous make-to-stock system with demand upgrade substitution

Yield management is crucial for high-tech industries to reduce over-production. However, it is very challenging for a manufacturer to make a yield decision under the circumstance of uncertain demand and stochastic product quality. For example, in semiconductor manufacturing industry, products are produced in batches within certain production cycle time. Even if the same raw material is put into the production system, the product qualities (measured by performance) usually are not identical due to random yield in the manufacturing process. Since products have overlapped performance specifications, products of the same batch are classified into different classes according to their qualities at the allocation stage. Products with higher performance can substitute for demand for products with lower performance. This type of production and allocation system can be specified as a make-to-stock system with single material, multi-products, multi-periods, upward demand substitution under random yield and uncertain demands. In order to maximize profit, the manufacturer needs to decide on the optimal input material quantity and the optimal allocation policy. The problem is formulated as a stochastic dynamic programming model. Because manufacturer׳s profit is affected by the allocation policies, ATP-r allocation policy is proposed to help manufacturer make real time allocation decisions. A numerical experiment shows that ATP-r allocation policy performs better than the traditional Myopic allocation policy. To reduce the computation burden involved in ATP-r allocation policy, we further propose a simplified algorithm and our experimental studies provide proof of the effectiveness of the proposed simple algorithm.

Is there a trade-off between parent care and self-care?

Caregiving for family members is often described as a 36-hour day. Previous literature has suggested that family caregivers have little time to attend to their own health needs, such as participating in leisure-time physical activity. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, we analyze whether time-allocation decisions reflect a conflict between time devoted to informal care and time devoted to self-health promotion through physical activity. The empirical model is a system of four correlated equations, wherein the dependent variables are hours spent caregiving, frequency of moderate and vigorous physical activity, and hours spent in paid work. Results from joint estimation of the four equations indicate limited evidence of a competition between time spent in caregiving and frequency of physical activity. Parental factors that increase allocation of care time to parents do not comprehensively induce reductions in the frequency of any type of physical activity, or in hours of work, among either men or women.

Who Hires Foreign Domestic Workers?: Evidence from Lebanon

Foreign domestic workers’ activities provide important market and non-market services in a large number of middle-income countries as these activities have an impact on the labor force participation and time allocation decisions of household members. This paper provides new evidence on the determinants of foreign domestic workers’ employment using a socio-economic dataset from Lebanon. Controlling for household, household head, dwelling and regional characteristics, contrary to popular beliefs we find that the size of the household and the presence of elderly persons are not important determinants of the hiring decision of foreign domestic workers, while the probability of hiring a domestic worker is significantly higher for households with children and disabled persons. Interestingly, we find that the number of rooms in the residence rather than its total surface area or type to be the only relevant dwelling characteristic. The paper offers insights about the demand for foreign domestic workers that may be useful to policy makers in developing nations.

Who Hires Foreign Domestic Workers? Evidence from Lebanon

Foreign domestic workers’ activities provide important market and non-market services in a large number of middle-income countries as these activities have an impact on the labor force participation and time allocation decisions of household members. This paper provides new evidence on the determinants of foreign domestic workers’ employment using a socio-economic dataset from Lebanon. Controlling for household, household head, dwelling and regional characteristics, contrary to popular beliefs we find that the size of the household and the presence of elderly persons are not important determinants of the hiring decision of foreign domestic workers, while the probability of hiring a domestic worker is significantly higher for households with children and disabled persons. Interestingly, we find that the number of rooms in the residence rather than its total surface area or type to be the only relevant dwelling characteristic. The paper offers insights about the demand for foreign domestic workers that may be useful to policy makers in developing nations.

Total work time in Spain: evidence from time diary data

Using detailed time-use data from 2002–03 and 2009–10 for Spain, we analyse changes in the time-allocation decisions of the Spanish population, with a focus on the time devoted to total work. Consistent with prior literature, we document that the concept of ‘iso-work’ (e.g. the time devoted to total work by gender is equal) does not hold in societies with stringent gender roles, such as Spain. Women devote more time to total work than men, and this difference has increased throughout the period studied by 2 hours per week. The relative increase in total work for women compared to men can be explained by a relative increase in market work of 8 hours per week, coupled with a relative decrease in nonmarket work of 6 hours per week, which have led Spanish women to devote, relatively, 2 fewer hours to leisure per week in 2009–10, compared to 2002–03. We propose social norms as a potential explanation of these empirical findings. By uncovering how individuals allocate their time inside and outside the market over a period of time, our results may improve our understanding of the dynamics of economic change and welfare.

On the importance of time diary data and introduction to a special issue on time use research

Economists are interested in how people behave under scarcity, and the most obvious scarce resource in the economy is time. Becker (1965) provided the framework for analyzing time allocation decisions, but other than some pioneering exceptions (such as Juster and Stafford 1985; Kooreman and Kapteyn 1987; Biddle and Hamermesh 1990) economists have only recently started to incorporate time outside the market in economic theory (see Hamermesh and Pfann (2005) for a review). Articles in this special issue on time use illustrate how time diary data can offer an ideal instrument not only to measure patterns of time allocation, but also to generate further understanding of economic decision-making processes. The opening paper brings together the two overarching topics in this issue: gender and the under-researched topic of children’s time use. ‘‘Household structure and housework: Assessing the contributions of all household members, with a focus on children and youths’’ by Jonathan Gershuny and Oriel Sullivan uses the UK Office of National Statistics Time Use Survey of 2000/1 to quantify the contributions to housework of all members of households—not just the adult members—accounting for heterogeneity across household types by taking into consideration the different roles of individuals within different household types. For example, the authors show that adolescent daughters do more housework than adolescent sons, and also that daughters aged under 12 behave differently depending on whether they are in a household including older children or not (doing more housework when they are). Taking these interactions into consideration can substantially improve the model’s fitness relative to a model ignoring the different roles of individuals in different household types. This descriptive exercise further supports the previous findings that the couple’s division of labor cannot give a true picture of the distribution of housework and child care within the home so long as a

The Intra‐household Division of Labor: An Empirical Analysis of Spousal Influences on Individual Time Allocation

AbstractUsing the German Time Use Surveys 1991/92 and 2001/02, this paper analyses the interactions between the time‐use decisions of partners within one household. Thereby, an interdependent model of the partners' times allocated to paid and unpaid work that allows for simultaneity and endogeneity of the time allocation decisions of the spouses is applied. When including both weekdays and weekend days in the analysis, a complementary relationship between the partner's time allocations is found. When restricting the analysis to weekdays, however, men's time dedicated to paid and unpaid work is unaffected by their wives' time‐use decisions.

Health Status and the Allocation of Time: Cross-Country Evidence from Europe

This paper analyzes the relationship between reported health status and time allocation decisions in six European countries. Using the Multinational Time Use Study, we find that a better perception of own health is associated with less time devoted to sleep, personal care, and non-market work, for both men and women, and with less time in leisure for men, while it is associated with more time in market work for both men and women. We also find that the relationship with activities is very similar across countries, and that market work has a relationship of substitution with sleep, personal care, non-market work, and leisure, with mixed evidence for the rest of the uses of time. These findings are consistent with prior results regarding health, market work, and leisure in the US. However, in contrast to the large positive correlation between health and home production in the US, we find a large negative correlation between these activities in the six European countries analyzed. This study represents a first step in understanding cross-country differences in the relationship between health status and time devoted to a range of activities, in contrast with other analyses that have mainly focused only on market work. A better understanding of these cross-country differences may help to identify the effects of public policies on individual uses of time.

Remittances and Child Labour in Africa: Evidence from Burkina Faso

This paper explores the effects of remittance receipt on child labour in an African context. We focus on Burkina Faso, a country with a high prevalence of child labour and a high rate of migration. Given the complex relationship between remittance receipt and household time allocation decisions, we instrument remittances using economic conditions in remittance-sending countries and explore heterogeneous effects across different types of potential remitters. While remittances have no significant effect on child labour on average, transfers reduce child labour in long-term migrant households, for whom the disruptive effect of migration is no longer felt. We find no gender difference but remittances seem to affect mainly the labour market participation of younger children.

Prediction of Commuter’s Daily Time Allocation

This paper presents a model system to predict the time allocation in commuters’ daily activity-travel pattern. The departure time and the arrival time are estimated with Ordered Probit model and Support Vector Regression is introduced for travel time and activity duration prediction. Applied in a real-world time allocation prediction experiment, the model system shows a satisfactory level of prediction accuracy. This study provides useful insights into commuters’ activity-travel time allocation decision by identifying the important influences, and the results are readily applied to a wide range of transportation practice, such as travel information system, by providing reliable forecast for variations in travel demand over time. By introducing the Support Vector Regression, it also makes a methodological contribution in enhancing prediction accuracy of travel time and activity duration prediction.

Regional unemployment, gender, and time allocation of the unemployed

This paper analyzes the relationship between time allocation decisions of the unemployed, gender, and regional unemployment rates. Using two cross-sections from the 2002–2003 and 2009–2010 Spanish Time Use Surveys, we find that higher regional unemployment rates are associated with increases in the time devoted to study by men. Regional unemployment rates are also associated with more time devoted to household production, particularly for unemployed men and women living in a couple, and to less time devoted to leisure, particularly for unemployed men with a working partner and unemployed women not living in a couple. We interpret our findings as evidence favoring consumption smoothing. Higher regional unemployment rates imply a lower availability of jobs for the unemployed, it reduces individual expectations of finding a job, and thus households may try to increase their time spent on household production to reduce market expenditures and thus maintain their consumption constant. Increases in the time devoted to household production during business cycles need to be considered in the analysis of the wellbeing of the unemployed. Consumption smoothing may imply increased wellbeing, but more time devoted to household production is associated with lower experienced utility of individuals throughout the day.

Why We Do What We Do: A Model of Activity Consumption

Consumers' time allocation decisions among various activities are fundamental to marketing research and consumer behavior. The authors construct a dynamic panel data model to examine how consumers allocate time to a portfolio of leisure activities over time. The data comprise a longitudinal panel in which the authors tracked 287 U.S. consumers' time use, consumption motives, and expertise measures on a weekly basis from January to June 2011. This is the first empirical research to examine the underlying mechanisms that guide the dynamics of an individual's activity consumption. The authors demonstrate that expertise contributes to the perceived benefits of an activity, which in turn leads to high value associated with it. Expertise also directly influences value obtained from an activity. This expertise, in turn, is acquired over time through past consumption. This finding implies a chain from expertise to value to time use and back to expertise, which may lead consumers to form a lifestyle in which they specialize in a subset of activities they know well. Consequently, expertise can be regarded as a key variable that explains lifestyle choices.

Children’s Time Allocation, Heterogeneity, and Simultaneous Decisions

This paper uses a longitudinal survey from the Philippines with detailed information on children’s time use to analyse the effects of economic factors on children’s time allocation and the trade-offs between time uses. The method takes account of the simultaneity of time use decisions by allowing for correlation of individual residuals across time uses and of unobservable family heterogeneity by including household fixed effects. There are statistically significant correlations between individual residuals and between household fixed effects when it comes to hours spent working and in school, but this correlation is substantially smaller than one. The individual level correlations between the different time uses are generally small. Including household heterogeneity leads to substantial changes in the estimated effects of many of the important explanatory variables, whereas correlation of residuals changes mainly the significance of the estimated parameter.

Does Work Impede Child Learning? The Case of Senegal

In African countries, children often combine school and work. This article exploits Senegalese panel data to assess the relationship between child labor and learning, measured by test scores. Test scores from the beginning of primary school control for children’s cognitive abilities, and children’s past time allocation decisions are instrumented by changes in rainfall and distance to primary school. Some of the tests were administered verbally in order to pick up effects for children who had only attended school very briefly. I do not find that children’s past participation in economic activities is associated with lower adolescent cognitive achievement, but rather that it is associated with higher oral mathematics scores. This association is stronger when I control for years of schooling, which suggests that work does displace schooling but does allow children to acquire some skills.

Patch choice from a distance and use of habitat information during foraging by the parasitoid Ibalia leucospoides

1. In environments in which resources are distributed heterogeneously, patch choice and the length of time spent on a patch by foragers are subject to strong selective pressures. This is particularly true for parasitoids because their host foraging success translates directly into individual fitness.2. The aim of this study was to test whether: (i) females of the parasitoid Ibalia leucospoides (Hymenoptera: Ibaliidae) can discriminate among patches according to host numbers; (ii) the surrounding context affects the initial choice of patch, as well as time spent on patch; and (iii) the perceived quality of a given patch is affected by the quality of the surrounding patches.3. Each female was randomly exposed to one of three different three‐patch environments which differed in host number per patch, mean environment host number and host distribution among patches. For each treatment level, the first patch chosen and the time allocated to each patch visited by the female were recorded.4. Females of I. leucospoides were able to discriminate different levels of host numbers among patches from a distance. The patch bearing the highest number of hosts was, predominantly, the first choice. Patch host number in association with mean habitat profitability influenced the length of time spent on the first patch visited. By contrast, variance in habitat profitability did not influence time allocation decisions. Contrary to the study prediction, there were no significant habitat‐dependent time allocation differences among patches holding the same number of hosts.5. The results indicate that, for I. leucospoides, patch exploitation decisions are partially influenced by information obtained from the habitat as a whole, a behaviour that may prove to indicate adaptive ability in highly patchy environments, as well as suggesting the presence of good cognitive abilities in this parasitoid species.

Labor supply, income, and welfare of the farm household

Considering family labor and hired labor as heterogeneous inputs, we present a theoretical framework in which the optimal decisions of a farm household on on-farm family and hired labor, off-farm labor supply, and leisure are determined uniquely and endogenously. Focusing on two alternative settings with and without off-farm employment constraints, we show that imperfect substitutability between family labor and hired labor is not critical to the separation of household production and consumption. The validity of the separation proposition is shown to depend crucially on whether or not the availability of off-farm job opportunities is limited. We further examine how changes in external economic conditions and government policies affect the time allocation decisions of the household, as well as the composition of household income (i.e., on-farm income and off-farm labor earnings).

Time Allocation Decisions of Academic Scientists and Their Impact on Technology Commercialization

This study analyzes how the time allocation decisions of tenured and tenure-track academic scientists in U.S. research universities affect the odds of being engaged in the creation, transfer, and commercialization of novel technologies with one or more industrial partners. Academic scientists are making time allocation decisions across three types of activities typically associated with the academic profession: teaching, research, and service. In a representative sample of 1543 scientists, the empirical results show that those scientists spending more time on research funded by federal grants and industrial contracts have higher propensity of being engaged in technology commercialization efforts than those who spent less time on this type of research. In contrast, scientists spending more time on research that is not funded by grants or industry contracts have significantly lower chances of being involved in technology commercialization. Surprisingly, spending more time on either teaching undergraduate or graduate students does not affect scientists' chances for technology commercialization. Scientists doing more paid consulting also have a higher likelihood of being involved in technology commercialization. Finally, we found complementary and substituting effects between certain types of research and time spent on teaching undergraduate students and their impact on being involved in technology commercialization. We discuss the implications for policy and academic entrepreneurship.