Following the Crowd: Leisure Complementarities Beyond the Household

Leisure externalities across households have potentially very important implications for labor market regulations, but they have proven difficult to identify. This paper exploits the unique features of school holidays and regulations about paid leave in France to identify how changes in the timing of work and leisure activities for individuals living with children affect the time use decisions of individuals living in other households. We find that exogenous increases in holidays for individuals living with children actually induce very significant increases in the demand for holidays from individuals living in other households. These positive interactions across households are all the more striking as exogenous increases in the number of individuals on holidays are also shown to be associated with very significant increases in the costs of holidays

Essais sur les déterminants non standards de l'offre de travail

Cette thèse présente quatre articles indépendants portant sur l’analyse de déterminants non standards de l’offre de travail. Les deux premiers chapitres s’appuient sur les spécificités du contexte institutionnel français en matière de vacances scolaires et de jours fériés afin d’étudier la demande des travailleurs pour la synchronisation des temps de loisir. Le premier chapitre se concentre sur les couples et révèle que lorsque certains travailleurs sont contraints de manière exogène à prendre des congés payés à certains moments, leur conjoint a également tendance à travailler moins à ces moments-là, même lorsque cela est coûteux pour lui. Le deuxième chapitre va au-delà du cadre du ménage, et montre que des variations exogènes du temps de travail des salariés vivant avec des enfants à des moments spécifiques de l’année induisent, aux mêmes moments, des variations similaires du temps de travail des salariés vivant sans enfants. Les deux derniers chapitres étudient la relation entre le patrimoine et l'offre de travail. Dans le troisième chapitre, nous examinons l'effet de l'héritage sur le comportement de départ en retraite des salariés. Ce chapitre montre que la réception d'un héritage a des effets très significatifs sur les probabilités de départ à la retraite, et présente des preuves empiriques que l'aversion au risque et les contraintes de liquidité sont des mécanismes importants pour expliquer cet effet. Dans le dernier chapitre, nous étudions l'évolution dans le temps de l'effet de la réception d'un héritage et des variations des prix de l'immobilier sur l’installation à son compte. Ce chapitre montre que l'effet de chacune de ces deux sources de variation de patrimoine sur le démarrage d’une activité non salariée a diminué au fil du temps, ce qui suggère un assouplissement des contraintes financières à l’installation à son compte ces dernières années.This thesis presents four independent works examining nonstandard determinants of labor supply. The first two chapters build on the unique features of public holidays and school holidays in France to study workers’ demand for joint leisure time. The first chapter focuses on couples and reveals that when some workers are exogenously constrained to take additional paid leave at certain points in time, their spouse also tends to take more time off at these moments, even when this is costly. The second chapter moves beyond the household to show that similar exogenous increases in the amount of leisure time enjoyed by workers living with children at specific moments induce very significant synchronous increases in the demand for leisure of workers living in other households. The last two chapters study the relationship between private wealth and labor supply. In the third chapter, we examine the effect of inheritance on the retirement behavior of older workers. We find that inheritance receipt has very significant effects on instantaneous retirement probabilities, and we provide empirical evidence that risk aversion and liquidity constraints are important channels for this effect. In the last chapter, we study the evolution over time of the effect of inheritance receipt and real-estate price variations on entry into self-employment. We find that the effect of both of these sources of variation of wealth on men’s entry into self-employment has decreased over time, suggesting a relaxation of financial constraints on entry into self-employment in recent years

On the retirement effect of inheritance: Heterogeneity and the role of risk aversion

This paper provides new insights on the effect of inheritance receipt on retirement. We build on lifelong information on inheritances received and labor market transitions available for respondents of the French Wealth Survey. This feature allows us to compare current retirement rates among current and future inheritors. Chances of current retirement are 40% higher among current inheritors than among individuals who will inherit in the next two years, but there is substantial heterogeneity in this effect across socio-demographic groups. The effect is also stronger for individuals with a higher risk aversion, which we interpret with a simple theoretical model

The Value of Leisure Synchronization

International audienceThis paper explores the extent to which workers are willing to trade hours worked for leisure time shared with their spouse. This parameter is essential to properly assess contemporary trends in the regulation of work and leisure time. We use the fact that the number and timing of paid vacation days to which French employees are entitled vary in a quasi-random way, from year to year, along with the dates of public holidays. Self-employed workers do not benefit from public holidays but we show that a large fraction of them substitute a day of unpaid leisure for a day of paid work whenever their spouse gets an extra day of paid leave

Following the Crowd: Leisure Complementarities beyond the Household

International audienceLeisure externalities across households have important implications for labor market regulations but have proven very difficult to identify. This paper exploits the unique features of school holidays and paid leave regulations in France to show that exogenous increases in the amount of leisure time enjoyed by workers living with children induce very significant increases in the demand for leisure of workers living in other households. We also provide evidence that these cross effects are driven by complementarities in nonmarket time rather than workplace norms or workplace externalities

The Value of Leisure Synchronization

This paper explores the extent to which workers are willing to trade hours worked for leisure time shared with their spouse. This parameter is essential to properly assess contemporary trends in the regulation of work and leisure time. We use the fact that the number and timing of paid vacation days to which French employees are entitled vary in a quasi-random way, from year to year, along with the dates of public holidays. Self-employed workers do not benefit from public holidays but we show that a large fraction of them substitute a day of unpaid leisure for a day of paid work whenever their spouse gets an extra day of paid leave

The Value of Leisure Synchronization

This paper explores the extent to which workers are willing to trade hours worked for leisure time shared with their spouse. This parameter is essential to properly assess contemporary trends in the regulation of work and leisure time. We use the fact that the number and timing of paid vacation days to which French employees are entitled vary in a quasi-random way, from year to year, along with the dates of public holidays. Self-employed workers do not benefit from public holidays but we show that a large fraction of them substitute a day of unpaid leisure for a day of paid work whenever their spouse gets an extra day of paid leave

The Value of Leisure Synchronization

International audienceThis paper explores the extent to which workers are willing to trade hours worked for leisure time shared with their spouse. We use the fact that the number and timing of paid vacation days to which French employees are entitled vary in a quasi-random way from year to year along with the dates of public holidays. Self-employed workers do not benefit from public holidays, but we show that a large fraction of them substitute a day of unpaid leisure for a day of paid work whenever their spouse gets an extra day of paid leave