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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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


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 Over the Business Cycle

Optimal Unemployment Insurance Over the Business Cycle PDF Author: Camille Landais
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business cycles
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Abstract: This paper analyzes optimal unemployment insurance over the business cycle in a search model in which unemployment stems from matching frictions (in booms) and job rationing (in recessions). Job rationing during recessions introduces two novel effects ignored in previous studies of optimal unemployment insurance. First, job-search efforts have little effect on aggregate unemployment because the number of jobs available is limited, independently of matching frictions. Second, while job-search efforts increase the individual probability of finding a job, they create a negative externality by reducing other jobseekers' probability of finding one of the few available jobs. Both effects are captured by the positive and countercyclical wedge between micro-elasticity and macro-elasticity of unemployment with respect to net rewards from work. We derive a simple optimal unemployment insurance formula expressed in terms of those two elasticities and risk aversion. The formula coincides with the classical Baily-Chetty formula only when unemployment is low, and macro- and micro-elasticity are (almost) equal. The formula implies that the generosity of unemployment insurance should be countercyclical. We illustrate this result by simulating the optimal unemployment insurance over the business cycle in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model calibrated with US data

Optimal Unemployment Insurance in Search Equilibrium

Optimal Unemployment Insurance in Search Equilibrium PDF Author: Peter Fredriksson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Should unemployment benefits be paid indefinitely at a fixed rate, or should it decline (or increase) over a worker's unemployment spell? We examine these issues using an equilibrium model of search unemployment. The model features worker-firm bargaining over wages, free entry of new jobs, and endogenous search effort among the unemployed. The main result is that an optimal insurance program implies a declining benefit sequence over the spell of unemployment. Numerical calibrations of the model suggest that there may be non-trivial welfare gains associated with switching from an optimal uniform benefit structure to an optimally differentiated system.

Search Theory and Unemployment

Search Theory and Unemployment PDF Author: Stephen A. Woodbury
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401002355
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Search Theory and Unemployment contains nine chapters that survey and extend the theory of job search and its application to the problem of unemployment. The volume ranges from surveys of job search theory that take microeconomic and macroeconomic perspectives to original theoretical contributions which focus on the externalities arising from non-sequential search and search under imperfect information. It includes a clear and authoritative survey of econometric methods that have been developed to estimate models of job search, as well as two lucid contributions to the empirical search literature. Finally, it includes a study that reviews and extends the literature on optimal unemployment insurance and concludes with an appraisal of the influence of search theory on the thinking of macroeconomic policymakers.

Pro-Cyclical Unemployment Benefits? Optimal Policy in an Equilibrium Business Cycle Model

Pro-Cyclical Unemployment Benefits? Optimal Policy in an Equilibrium Business Cycle Model PDF Author: Kurt Mitman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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We study the optimal provision of unemployment insurance (UI) over the business cycle. We use an equilibrium search and matching model with aggregate shocks to labor productivity, incorporating risk-averse workers, endogenous worker search effort decisions, and unemployment benefit expiration. We characterize the optimal UI policy, allowing both the benefit level and benefit duration to depend on the history of past aggregate shocks. We find that the optimal benefit is decreasing in current productivity and decreasing in current unemployment. Following a drop in productivity, benefits initially rise in order to provide short-run relief to the unemployed and stabilize wages, but then fall significantly below their pre-recession level, in order to speed up the subsequent recovery. Under the optimal policy, the path of benefits is pro-cyclical overall. As compared to the existing U.S. UI system, the optimal history-dependent benefits smooth cyclical fluctuations in unemployment and deliver substantial welfare gains.

Optimal Unemployment Insurance in a Model With Skill Loss and Match Quality Uncertainty

Optimal Unemployment Insurance in a Model With Skill Loss and Match Quality Uncertainty PDF Author: Michael John Nipple
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 98

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Book Description
This dissertation makes a contribution to the question of how best to set the rate of unemployment compensation. Previous research on this topic has emphasized the behavioral response of non-workers to various incentives created by unemployment insurance. Recent work has emphasized two new features. One is the importance of including savings in the model, and the other the recognition that skills tend to rise during employment and fall during unemployment spells. This thesis seeks to combine all three features, search incentives, savings, and skill change effects. The strategy is to develop an unemployment model with these features and to obtain parameters values from a variety of sources, including SIPP data and research by other authors on related questions. The model is then simulated for various ranges of policy choices. The primary policy choice is the benefit replacement ratio, a number that determines the actual level of unemployment compensation. Taxes are set under different assumptions. In some cases, taxes are set to achieve budget balance. In other cases, taxes are set independently of benefit levels. This feature assumes the possibility of a subsidy from other sources, but it allows for a study of the independent incentive effects of benefits and tax rates. Results from the simulations using the most likely parameter specification indicate that a replacement ratio of 58\% is best. A replacement ratio slightly higher than the optimal ratio can lead to a large decrease in average utility, and is problematic. When human capital changes are relatively less responsive to unemployment and employment duration, longer unemployment spells are more desirable as they lead to better matches. When the effect of taxes and benefits are looked at separately, the benefit ratio aspects matters more than the tax rate.

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.

Equilibrium Unemployment Insurance

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

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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.

Unemployment Insurance and Training in an Equilibrium Matching Model with Heterogeneous Agents

Unemployment Insurance and Training in an Equilibrium Matching Model with Heterogeneous Agents PDF Author: Bruno Van der Linden
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 48

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