It is a platitude that most people, as they say, 'work to live' rather than 'live to work.' And in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, work weeks have expanded and the divide between work time and personal time has significantly blurred due to innovations in such things as electronic communications. Concerns over the value of work in our lives, as well as with the balance or use of time between work and leisure, confront most people in contemporary society. Discussions over the values of time, leisure, and work are directly related to the time-honored question of what makes a life good. And this question is of particular interest to philosophers, especially ethicists. In this volume, leading scholars address a range of value considerations related to peoples' thoughts and practices around time utilization, leisure, and work with masterful insight. In addressing various practical issues, these scholars demonstrate the timeless relevance and practical import of Philosophy to human lived experience.

Examines the profound transformations in the nature and organization of work that are occurring worldwide, with potentially far reaching social and economic consequences.

Most economists measure labor productivity based on activities conducted at places of work and do not consider leisure time in their calculations. In contrast, psychologists and sociologists argue that leisure has a positive role in the production process: leisure can improve individuals' labor productivity by affecting their self-development. Using empirical data from 21 OECD countries, this study finds that leisure time has a dual effect on labor productivity in terms of per capita per hour GDP. Moreover, leisure time is nonlinearly associated with labor productivity (inverted U-shaped). When leisure time reaches the optimal level (5,813 hours), leisure has a compensatory effect on work and can positively influence labor productivity, but when leisure time exceeds the optimal value, leisure has a substitution effect on work and can negatively influence labor productivity.

This volume examines the newly emerging political economy of time, in the light of new estimates of how time is actually spent, and of how this has changed, in the development of the world.

Explores the major changes in our use of and attitude to time over three centuries. Asks why the 1960s and 1970s expectation that leisure time would increase has failed to come about