The purpose of this paper is to investigate the retirement decision in the United Kingdom. We distinguish four retirement routes: retirement, unemployment, long-term sickness and other states. The focus of the paper is the impact of pension benefits on retirement transitions. We estimate...

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...

Earlier studies suggest that income taxation may affect not only labour supply but also domestic work. Here we investigate the impact of income taxation on partners' labour supply and housework, using data for France that taxes incomes of married couples jointly. We estimate a household utility...

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 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 a...

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...