Experiments with subjects working for brain stimulation reward provide a聽psychophysically precise insight into the trade-off between labour and聽leisure. It has been conventional to look at the resulting behaviour聽through the same sort of macroscopic lens as in the economics of labour聽supply theory. We have constructed a more microscopic account of the聽choices that are made, and show how we can use it to characterize the聽comparative value of their various activities. We then extend the聽framework to look at effects of fatigue and satiation, contrasting聽retrospective effects (which tend to make one consume leisure more聽avidly after a bout of hard work; e.g., on a Saturday morning) and聽prospective effects (which direct consumption to before a bout of hard聽work; e.g., on a Sunday night).
This is joint work with Ritwik Niyogi and Peter Shizgal