John A. KNowles, Economics

I am a professor of economics at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. My main field of research is macro-economics, broadly defined. I specialize in developing equilibrium models to analyze micro-level data sets, usually in the field of family economics, but including also some early work on racial profiling.

My most recent publication (2019) analyses the post-war marriage boom in France. Currently in the revision cycle at journals, I have a paper accounting for the rise of unmarried mothers in the US, and one on how family history may play a key role in the marriage market, due to the concerns of singles about the effect of their spouse's unobserved traits on the quality of the couple's potential offspring.

I am also finalizing a working paper on inequality of household savings, which explores the role of a personality trait, referred to as "future-orientedness", on household savings. The paper also shows how in parents this trait appears to influence the adult offspring, not just with respect to the offspring's saving , but also with respect to other types of inter-temporal tradeoffs, that have little to do with financial acumen, such as the timing of marriage and births.

Before joining SFU in 2014, I was at the University of Southampton, in the U.K. Prior to that I was at the University of Pennsylvania, from 1999 to 2008. I completed my PhD at the University of Rochester, N.Y. in 1999.

Please follow the links in the top-right corner to learn more about my research and teaching.

Email: John A. Knowles

Department of Economics, WMC,

8888 University Drive, Burnaby,

B.C. Canada V5A 1S6

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