Optimal growth when consumption takes time

URL des Documents de travail : http://ces.univ-paris1.fr/cesdp/cesdp2016.htmlThis article establishes a growth model in which consumption takes time. The agent faces a time constraint, i.e; her/his available amount of time must be optimally share between consuming time and working time. By using a dynamic programming argument, it is proved that the optimal capital sequences are monotonic and have property that converges to steady state. We also compare this model to the one agent growth model with elastic labor. We obtain that (i) When the quantity of time to consume one unit of consumption increases, the agent devotes less time for labour. (ii) When the quantity of time to consume one unit of consumption is smaller that the threshod, it is better for the economy to spend time to consume than to enjoy leisure. We have more time for labour. This implies more output and more consumption. We reverse the situation when the quantity of time to consume one unit of consumption is larger than the threshold. We give an example to illustrate this result. Finally, if both models have the same technology which is of constant returns to scale, then they have the same ratios capital stock per head and consumption per head