Habit persistence and the long-run labor supply

Standard macroeconomic models possess the undesirable feature that people stop working in the long run. Assuming standard parameters, the neoclassical model predicts that 2% of annual productivity growth leads to a 99% decline in the labor supply after 624 years. Yet, this contradicts the fact that labor hours per capita are relatively stable, even over a long period of time. This paper shows how internal and external habit persistence each work to stabilize the long run labor supply, independent of key parameter choices. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.