Existing studies show that individuals who retire replace some private consumption by home production, but do not consider joint behaviour of couples. Here we analyze the causal effect of retirement of each partner on hours of home production of both partners in a couple. Our identification...

This paper looks at French couples’ labour market behaviour over the last thirteen years, from 1990 to 2002. We find that the proportion of dual earners couples has been steadily rising over time. Joint activity rates have gone up from 52% in 1990 to over 58% in 2002. About a fifth of women in...

This paper investigates the employment impact of a new tax-credit programme that was put in place in France in 2001. We study the introduction of both this measure and a later reform in 2004 that made the tax credit cashable in advance upon returning to work. We adopt a non-experimental...

This paper aims at carrying out an international comparison of fathers’ caring time. The time fathers dedicate to caring for their children is typically constrained by the longer working hours culture and the lesser incentives for fathers to take up childcare leave. This paper draws a...

In the literature on partners' joint retirement decisions one of the explanations for joint retirement is externalities in leisure. Exploiting the law on early retirement age in France, we use a regression discontinuity approach to identify the causal effect of retirement on hours of leisure,...

We study the impact of income taxation on both partners’ allocation of time to market work and unpaid house work in households with two adults. We estimate a structural household utility model in which the marginal utilities of leisure and house work of both partners are modelled as random...

Earlier studies conclude that spouses' retirement strategies are not independent from each other and that policies affecting individuals in a couple are also likely to affect the economic behaviour of their partner. In this study, we exploit retirement age legislation in France as well as a...