Extensions of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits have been implemented in response to the Great Recession. This paper measures the effect of these extensions on the unemployment rate using a calibrated structural model featuring job search and consumption-saving decisions, skill depreciation, and UI eligibility. The ongoing UI benefit extensions are found to have raised the unemployment rate ...

I show that the full-insurance model of consumption choice is a reasonable approximation to the more realistic case of no insurance when the adverse shocks take the form of spells of unemployment. Further, my results support the assumption of the Mortensen-Pissarides model that the flow amenity value of unemployment—the value of not having to work—is a constant when stated in units of consumpti...

We study optimal redistributive policies in a frictional model of the labor market. Ex-ante heterogeneous agents choose how much to search in a labor market characterized by a matching technology. We first derive efficiency results and provide policies to decentralize the optimal allocation. We then solve the mechanism design problem of a government with redistributive motives and limited infor...

This paper uses longitudinal data from the Dutch OSA Labor Supply Panel (1980-2000) to examine the phenomenon of unemployment scarring in the Netherlands. The study extends current research by not only asking if earlier unemployment damages subsequent employment careers and wages but also explores variation by the level of unemployment insurance benefits and key individual characteristics such ...

BACKGROUND As social health is a condition-driven, dynamic and fluid concept, it seems necessary to construct and obtain a national and relevant concept of it for every society. Providing an empirical back up for Iran's concept of social health was the aim of the present study. METHODS This study is an ecologic study in which available data for 30 provinces of Iran in 2007 were analyzed. In o...

This article was prepared initially for an international conference of social security program administrators and researchers. They examined the reasons for, and implications of, a recent trend in several European countries toward making it easier to qualify for retirement or disability benefits as a way of alleviating long-term unemployment. The article notes that the United States has not fol...

Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) awards rise during recessions. If marginal applicants are able to work but unable to find jobs, countercyclical Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefit extensions may reduce SSDI uptake. Exploiting UI extensions in the Great Recession as a source of variation, we find no indication that expiration of UI benefits causes SSDI applications and can rule out e...

Hagadorn and co-authors (HKMM) invite the interpretation that most of the large increase in unemployment since 2007 can be blamed on the rising generosity of unemployment insurance benefits, leaving little to blame on the financial crisis. But the paper does not make that claim. And the claim is incorrect. The right way to explain the claims of the the paper is that a policy of extending UI ben...

This paper studies the effects of unemployment policies in a simple static general equilibrium model with adverse selection in the labor market. Firms offer a contract that induces the selfselection of workers. In equilibrium, all unskilled workers are screened out and some skilled workers are rationed out. It is shown that the provision of unemployment insurance (UI) raises involuntary unemplo...

Previous research suggests that there are substantial interactions between the unemployment insurance (UI) and the sickness insurance (SI) in Sweden. Moral hazard arises in the interplay between these two social insurance systems, since by reporting sick an unemployed person can postpone the UI expiration date and sometimes also receive considerably higher benefits. This paper examines whether ...