It's a game theory thing. It's more efficient if we all shop during a limited time and the retail workers then go home. However, if one shop is open when the other is not then people stop restricting their purchasing times and go to the open shop, forcing the competitor to also be open all the time. End result is lots of retail workers wasting time while waiting for customers around the clock.

I wonder how that plays out in the internet (Amazon) age? I do most of my retail shopping on the weekends. Cut out 50% of my available shopping time, and it's just another incentive to buy online.

> It's a game theory thing. It's more efficient if we all shop during a limited time and the retail workers then go home.

Depends on what you want to optimize / what the bottleneck is.

If you have your shops open around the clock, you can use the real estate more efficiently.

Limiting competition has other effects as well. Where I grew up, all of the car dealers had the same hours, that were practically bankers hours. The hours were so restrictive that it was literally hard to shop around at multiple dealers within a finite time period, if you worked a regular job. It was rumored, and reported in the papers, that a dealer who violated the rule would have their lot vandalized.

> [...], that were practically bankers hours.

I wonder when was the last time that bankers had bankers hours.

It depends on the area, available work places, available workers, etc.

In some areas it's going to be as you say - if you want you can close up on Sunday. In other areas it means that lots of people want any kind of work and huge retail places will offer it - of course you have to work extra hours and every weekend. They can do it, because if you don't take the job, the next person will, because they need to.

The interesting alternative I've seen is limited trading hours on the weekend for shops over the size of X m sq. So you still can buy what you need, just not at the mall.