Earlier literature has investigated the drop in household consumption upon retirement of the head of the household, the so-called “retirement consumption puzzle”. Here, we expand on these studies by considering also retirement of the wife, thus distinguishing households in which the wife is...

The economic litterature on retirement argues that individuals in a couple tend to retire at a choice time because of externalities in leisure. Ealier studies dit not investigate the extent to which partners actually spend more leisure time together upon retiring. Exploiting the law on early...

Earlier studies conclude that spouses time their retirement closely together. Here, we exploit early retirement age legislation to identify the effect of own and spousal retirement on spouses' hours of work. The sample for the analysis includes over 85000 French couples. We conclude that hours...