Joseph Marchand

Bio: Joseph Marchand is an academic researcher from University of Alberta. The author has contributed to research in topics: Consumption (economics) & Labor demand. The author has an hindex of 12, co-authored 34 publications receiving 681 citations. Previous affiliations of Joseph Marchand include Syracuse University.

Local labor markets and natural resources: a synthesis of the literature

Abstract: A primary way that natural resources affect a locality is through the demand for labor, with greater extraction requiring more workers. Shifts in labor demand can be measured through changes in employment and earnings, the main labor market outcomes, or through changes in the population and income, more generally. These changes may spillover into the nonresource economy, leading to greater overall effects or possibly crowd out; be spread unequally across the population, thereby altering the distribution of income and the poverty rate; or influence educational attainment, as people choose between additional schooling and work. In this review, the literature linking natural resources to local labor markets is synthesized by organizing existing studies according to their resource measurement and the outcomes that they consider. This synthesis provides an accessible guide to a literature that has boomed in recent years. It also identifies promising avenues for future research and lays a foundation to further generalize the evidence through an eventual meta-analysis.

The Retirement Consumption Conundrum: Evidence from a Consumption Survey

Abstract: While the life-cycle hypothesis predicts that consumption remains smooth during the transition from work into retirement, recent studies have shown that consumption declines at retirement. This empirical result has been referred to as the retirement consumption puzzle. Previous literature has most often relied on food expenditures to estimate the decline in consumption at retirement.We add to this literature by using broader definitions of consumption data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX), which is a survey designed to estimate total household expenditures. We conduct cohort analysis, using data on four cohorts over 20 years from 1984 to 2003. Our results using only food expenditures are on the lower end of the distribution of existing results. As we use broader measures of consumption, our results suggest that the retirement consumption conundrum decreases by more than half. Further, another contribution of this analysis is to widen the focus of the study of the well-being of the elderly. The retirement consumption puzzle does not tell the whole story on the well-being of the elderly. While we find that consumption-expenditures decrease by about 2.5 percent when individuals retire, expenditures continue to decline at about a rate of 1 percent per year after that.

No Place Like Home: Older Adults and Their Housing

Abstract: Objectives. The home is both older Americans’ largest asset and their largest consumption good. This article employs new data on the consumption and assets of older Americans to investigate what role the home plays in the economic lives of older adults. Methods. We used 20 years of data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey to examine the asset and consumption trends of four cohorts of older Americans. We compared the data with other survey results. Results. Older Americans’ homeownership rates were stable until age 80. The homes were increasingly mortgage free; home equity increased with age, and relatively few older adults took out home equity loans or reverse annuity mortgages. Housing consumption flows increased with age; nonhousing consumption flows declined after age 60 at a rate of approximately 1.4% per year. Discussion. The results suggest that the consumption of cohorts of older Americans does not decrease dramatically over a 20-year period and that they are also not converting their housing assets into other types of income or consumption, at least up to age 80. A number of reasons, including the bequest motive and the life cycle hypothesis, might explain this behavior.

No Place Like Home: Older Adults and Their Housing

Abstract: Objectives: This paper employs new data on the consumption and assets of older Americans to investigate recent research findings that older adults do not convert their home equity into income that can be used for current consumption, as the life-cycle hypothesis predictsMethods: We use data over twenty years from the Consumer Expenditure Survey to examine the asset and consumption trends of older adults, buttressed with additional findings from the Survey of Consumer Finances and the American Housing SurveyResults: Older American’s homeownership rates are stable until age 80 and after 80 tend to decline slowly The homes are increasingly mortgage-free; home equity increases with age, and few older adults take out home equity loans or reverse annuity mortgages Housing consumption-flows increase with age; non-housing consumption-flows decline after age 60 at a rate of approximately 14% a yearDiscussion: The results suggest that most older Americans are not converting their housing assets into consumption despite the life-cycle hypothesis predictions This is also inconsistent with international trends where homeownership rates fall substantially with age One reason may be because older Americans may be holding onto their homes to finance long-term care If this is the case, their economic behavior may be more consistent with the life-cycle hypothesis than previous research suggests

Consumption and Saving: Models of Intertemporal Allocation and Their Implications for Public Policy

Abstract: This paper provides a critical survey of the large literature on the life cycle model of consumption, both from an empirical and a theoretical point of view. It discusses several approaches that have been taken in the literature to bring the model to the data, their empirical successes and failures. Finally, the paper reviews a number of changes to the standard life cycle model that could help solve the remaining empirical puzzles.

Asset-Based Measurement of Poverty

Abstract: Poverty is generally defined as income or expenditure insufficiency, but the economic condition of a household also depends on its real and financial asset holdings. This paper investigates measures of poverty that rely on indicators of household net worth. We review and assess two main approaches followed in the literature: income-net worth measures and asset-poverty. We provide fresh cross-national evidence based on data from the Luxembourg Wealth Study.

Measurement of inequality

Abstract: The analysis of inequality is placed in the context of recent developments in economics and statistics.