Women labour supply and country specific institutions

In this thesis, I study the influence of country-specific institutions on the labour supply decision of prime-aged women. In chapter 1, I use reduced-form methods, to evaluate the impact of wide changes to the benefit system and childcare subsidies targeted at households with pre-school age children in France. I estimate strong responses to maternity leave type benefits, and a positive impact of childcare subsidies on mothers employment rates in the long-run. In chapter 2, I develop and estimate a static labour supply model with part-time wage equations as well as demand-side constraints. I can compare the elasticities estimates and predictions from tax reform simulations to those of models assuming a unique hourly productivity and the absence of any employment constraint. The structural model also enables me to clearly simulate the impact of each component of the wide policy reform studied in the first chapter. In chapter 3, I try to understand why the number of hours worked by British married women is lower than that of French married women. I find that in the presence of children, British mothers are far more responsive to financial incentives. Husbands’ earnings and their interaction with childcare prices seem to play an important role. Nevertheless, the fall in hours worked in the British households with children, despite facing lower taxes than in France, remains somewhat puzzling. It could be mainly attributed (in the framework used) to different preferences. In the final chapter, I study the impact of joint-taxation on the labour supply choices of married women with working husbands in France. I simulate a revenue-neutral reform that would cancel the tax penalty or gain associated with being married. I find that the overall labour supply of these women would increase by 1.2%