Optimal Unemployment Insurance

Optimal Unemployment Insurance PDF Author: Andreas Pollak
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
ISBN: 9783161493041
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
Designing a good unemployment insurance scheme is a delicate matter. In a system with no or little insurance, households may be subject to a high income risk, whereas excessively generous unemployment insurance systems are known to lead to high unemployment rates and are costly both from a fiscal perspective and for society as a whole. Andreas Pollak investigates what an optimal unemployment insurance system would look like, i.e. a system that constitutes the best possible compromise between income security and incentives to work. Using theoretical economic models and complex numerical simulations, he studies the effects of benefit levels and payment durations on unemployment and welfare. As the models allow for considerable heterogeneity of households, including a history-dependent labor productivity, it is possible to analyze how certain policies affect individuals in a specific age, wealth or skill group. The most important aspect of an unemployment insurance system turns out to be the benefits paid to the long-term unemployed. If this parameter is chosen too high, a large number of households may get caught in a long spell of unemployment with little chance of finding work again. Based on the predictions in these models, the so-called "Hartz IV" labor market reform recently adopted in Germany should have highly favorable effects on the unemployment rates and welfare in the long run.

Optimal Unemployment Insurance

Optimal Unemployment Insurance PDF Author: Andreas Pollak
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
ISBN: 9783161493041
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 204

Get Book Here

Book Description
Designing a good unemployment insurance scheme is a delicate matter. In a system with no or little insurance, households may be subject to a high income risk, whereas excessively generous unemployment insurance systems are known to lead to high unemployment rates and are costly both from a fiscal perspective and for society as a whole. Andreas Pollak investigates what an optimal unemployment insurance system would look like, i.e. a system that constitutes the best possible compromise between income security and incentives to work. Using theoretical economic models and complex numerical simulations, he studies the effects of benefit levels and payment durations on unemployment and welfare. As the models allow for considerable heterogeneity of households, including a history-dependent labor productivity, it is possible to analyze how certain policies affect individuals in a specific age, wealth or skill group. The most important aspect of an unemployment insurance system turns out to be the benefits paid to the long-term unemployed. If this parameter is chosen too high, a large number of households may get caught in a long spell of unemployment with little chance of finding work again. Based on the predictions in these models, the so-called "Hartz IV" labor market reform recently adopted in Germany should have highly favorable effects on the unemployment rates and welfare in the long run.

Equilibrium Unemployment Insurance

Equilibrium Unemployment Insurance PDF Author: John Hassler
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Equilibrium (Economics)
Languages : en
Pages : 56

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Book Description


Equilibrium Unemployment Insurance

Equilibrium Unemployment Insurance PDF Author: John Hassler
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In this paper, we incorporate a positive theory of unemployment insurance into a dynamic overlapping generations model with search-matching frictions and on-the-job learning-by-doing. The model shows that societies populated by identical rational agents, but differing in the initial distribution of human capital across agents, may choose very different unemployment insurance levels in a politico-economic equilibrium. The interaction between the political decision about the level of the unemployment insurance and the optimal search behavior of the unemployed gives rise to a self-reinforcing mechanism whichmay generate multiple steady-state equilibria. In particular, a European-type steady-state with high unemployment, low employment turnover and high insurance can co-exist with an American-type steady-state with low unemployment, high employment turnover and low unemployment insurance. A calibrated version of the model features two distinct steady-state equilibria with unemployment levels and duration rates resembling those of the U.S. and Europe, respectively.

Measuring the Equilibrium Effects of Unemployment Benefits Dispersion

Measuring the Equilibrium Effects of Unemployment Benefits Dispersion PDF Author: Aico van Vuuren
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Insurance, Unemployment
Languages : en
Pages : 60

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Book Description


Optimal Unemployment Insurance in a Matching Equilibrium

Optimal Unemployment Insurance in a Matching Equilibrium PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Unemployment and Insurance

Unemployment and Insurance PDF Author: Sherwin Rosen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Insurance, Unemployment
Languages : en
Pages : 88

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Book Description
This paper elaborates equilibrium properties of contract labor markets when cost barriers limit labor mobility in response to demand and productivity shifts. Unemployment is sustained because the marginal value of labor is not equated across all firms; however the equilibrium contract optimally allocates a worker's time between market and nonmarket uses, given transactions cost-mobility constraints. Contracts provide full unemployment insurance for risks that are diversifiable by pooling among firms. Nondiversifiable (macro) risks are only partially shifted,largely through self-insurance (contingency saving). Increasing diversifiable risk has social value, similar to the value of an option. Increasing nondiversifiable risk has negative value because it reduces lifetime consumption. The main empirical implication of contract theory is shown to be closely related to the permanent income hypothesis and establishes linkages between labor activities and consumption behavior. It is atheory of consumption rigidity rather than wage rigidity. Another empirical implication is that unemployment incidence is proportional to comparative advantage in normarket production. Layoffs are ordered by workers' relative productivity in nonmarket compared with market sectors. The theory is used to analyze some features of the U.S. employment system. Its empirical support is briefly reviewed.

Macroeconomic Determinants of Equilibrium Unemployment Insurance

Macroeconomic Determinants of Equilibrium Unemployment Insurance PDF Author: Francisco Carneiro
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This paper proposes a new modeling strategy as regards the definition of an optimal level of unemployment benefits. While the traditional methodology privileges labor market equilibrium to derive optimal employment, wage and unemployment benefit levels, we present a model in which the optimal level of unemployment benefits is a function of the government's macroeconomic objectives in terms of inflation and output fluctuations. In a second stage, the model allows for the investigation of unemployment insurance effects on labor market equilibrium.

Equilibrium Unemployment

Equilibrium Unemployment PDF Author: Joao Gomes
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business cycles
Languages : en
Pages : 58

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Book Description
A search-theoretic general equilibrium model of frictional unemployment is shown to be consistent with some of the key regularities of unemployment over the business cycle. In the model the return to a job moves stochastically. Agents can choose either to quit and search for a better job, or continue working. Search generates job offers that agents can accept or reject. Two distinguishing features of current work relative to the existing business cycle literature on labor market fluctuations are: (i) the decision to accept or reject jobs is modeled explicitly, and (ii) there is imperfect insurance against unemployment.

Equilibrium Unemployment Theory, second edition

Equilibrium Unemployment Theory, second edition PDF Author: Christopher A. Pissarides
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262264068
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
This book focuses on the modeling of the transitions in and out of unemployment, given the stochastic processes that break up jobs and lead to the formation of new jobs, and on the implications of this approach for macroeconomic equilibrium and for the efficiency of the labor market. An equilibrium theory of unemployment assumes that firms and workers maximize their payoffs under rational expectations and that wages are determined to exploit the private gains from trade. This book focuses on the modeling of the transitions in and out of unemployment, given the stochastic processes that break up jobs and lead to the formation of new jobs, and on the implications of this approach for macroeconomic equilibrium and for the efficiency of the labor market. This approach to labor market equilibrium and unemployment has been successful in explaining the determinants of the "natural" rate of unemployment and new data on job and worker flows, in modeling the labor market in equilibrium business cycle and growth models, and in analyzing welfare policy. The second edition contains two new chapters, one on endogenous job destruction and one on search on the job and job-to-job quitting. The rest of the book has been extensively rewritten and, in several cases, simplified.

Modelling Unemployment Insurance

Modelling Unemployment Insurance PDF Author: Paola Potestio
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030913198
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
This book examines unemployment insurance policy through a survey, taking stock of the theoretical work in the field of labor economics. It closely follows and assesses developments in the modelling of optimal unemployment insurance (UI) policies, beginning with the initial analytical findings produced in the second half of the 1970s. A main part of the survey is devoted to the two basic strands of analysis about, respectively, the optimal level of UI benefits and the optimal time profile of UI policy. The book has two different objectives. The first is to provide an essential summary of the individual models, with the intention of underscoring how a number of specific messages for the policy-maker can be derived from analytical constructions. It further emphasizes and comments on what the models deliver to UI policy-makers. The second objective is to stress the importance and extension of open questions in the field of the theoretical approach to the unemployment insurance issue. The survey discusses the multiplicity of heterogeneities of the labor world in particular as relevant for UI issues on the one side, and on the other hand, the independence of the two basic choices of UI policy, its meaning and its limits, and the possible forms of complementarity between these choices. The book is a must-read for researchers, students, and policy-makers interested in a better understanding of the field of labor economics in general, as well as unemployment insurance policies in particular.