This paper shows that the existence and persistence of ‘overeducation’ can be explained by an extension of the efficiency wage model. When calibrated to fit the amounts of overeducation found in most empirical studies, the model implies that both the relative wage and the relative employment rate of high-skill workers depend inversely on aggregate economic activity. Keeping aggregate employment...

The effect of unemployment benefits (UB) on the behavior of unemployed individuals has been extensively studied in the literature. In contrast, we still know little about how UB affect the behavior of employed workers. This paper aims at filling this gap, using job-to-job (JTJ) transitions as the main outcome of analysis. The theoretical framework developed in the paper indicates that UB should...

The recent global recession and concurrent rise in job loss makes unemployment insurance (UI) increasingly important to smooth patterns of consumption and keep households from experiencing extreme material poverty. In this paper, we undertake a realist review to produce a critical understanding of how and why UI policies impact on poverty and health in different welfare state contexts between 2...

Whenever unemployment stays high for an extended period, it is common to see analyses, statements, and rebuttals about the extent to which the high unemployment is structural, not cyclical. This essay views the Beveridge curve pattern of unemployment and vacancy rates and the related matching function as proxies for the functioning of the labor market and explores issues in that proxy relations...

this paper argues that a risk averse of workers after-tax reservation wage the difference between her reservation wage and the tax needed to fund the unemployment insurance system when liquidity constraint binds exists and it is unique. the optimality of unemployment insurance based on the responsiveness of reservation wage to unemployment benefit shows the disincentive effect, i.e. higher unem...

Structural unemployment differs from cyclical unemployment by not disappearing in cyclical booms. In economic theory, structural unemployment is usually analyzed in terms of the concept of equilibrium unemployment (the “natural unemployment rate” in Friedman’s terminology). Two elaborate concepts of equilibrium unemployment – the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (the NAIRU) and t...