Time and cost budgets (Q1068685)

Activity models in which the agent's activities are measured as fractions of a time unit are considered both as cost-minimizing programs under a time constraint and as time-minimizing programs under a standard budget constraint. The equivalence between both the primal and dual variables of the programs is described. The values of the dual variables assigned to the agent's social constraints imply the objective valuation and interpersonal comparison of his so-called ''social income'' in both dollar values and time units. Potential applications to social accounts which include both cost and time use data are discussed.