DeSerpa’s Time Allocation Model: A Comment

Abstract

The time allocation model of Allan DeSerpa has received little recognition from the mainstream microeconomics literature on this subject, despite its infl uence on cost-benefit analysis of projects of transportation, especially in the computation of the opportunity cost of time. Given that DeSerpa introduced his model as an alternative to Gary Becker’s model,the present paper initially compares the two models. It follows that DeSerpa was one of the fi rst authors to formally analyze the consequences of joint production in the context of Becker’s model. Also, the accepted usage of two-stage optimization in the presence of joint domestic production is also something that may be qualified from DeSerpa’s analysis. It is a suffi cient condition for this procedure that all domestic uses of time involve negative marginal utility.