Advertising, Labor Supply And The Aggregate Economy. A Long Run Analysis

This paper studies the influence of persuasive advertising in a neoclassical growth model with monopolistically competitive firms. The findings show that advertising can significantly affect the stationary equilibrium of a model economy in which the labor supply is endogenous. In this case, for empirically plausible calibrations, the authors find that the equilibrium level of hours worked, GDP, and consumption increase with the amount of resources invested in advertising. These findings are consistent with a new stylized fact provided in this paper: over the past decade, per-capita advertising expenditures have been positively correlated with per-capita output, consumption and hours worked across OECD countries.