Do Unemployment Benefits Increase Unemployment? New Evidence on an Old Question

Do Unemployment Benefits Increase Unemployment? New Evidence on an Old Question

Do Unemployment Benefits Increase Unemployment? New Evidence on an Old Question We examine the relationship between unemployment benefits and unemployment using Swedish regional data. To estimate the effect of an increase in unemployment insurance (UI) on unemployment we exploit the ceiling on UI benefits. The benefit ceiling, coupled with the fact that there are regional wage differentials, im...

The Effects of Unemployment Insurance Benefits: New Evidence and Interpretation∗

The Great Recession has renewed interest in Unemployment Insurance (UI) programs around the world. At the same time, there have been important advances in both theory and measurement of UI. In this paper, we first use the theory to present a unified treatment of the welfare effects of UI benefit levels and durations and derive convenient expressions of the disincentive effect of UI. We then dis...

The Impact of State Unemployment Benefits on Unemployment in America

The effect of unemployment benefits on re-employment rates: Evidence from the Finnish unemployment insurance reform

a r t i c l e i n f o In January 2003, the unemployment benefits in Finland were increased for workers with long employment histories. The average benefit increase was 15% for the first 150 days of the unemployment spell. At the same time severance pay system was abolished. In this paper we evaluate the effect of the change in the benefit structure on the duration of unemployment by comparing t...

The Effect of Unemployment Benefits on the Duration of Unemployment Insurance Receipt: New Evidence from a Regression

We provide new evidence on the effect of the unemployment insurance (UI) weekly benefit amount on unemployment insurance spells based on administrative data from the state of Missouri covering the period 2003-2013. Identification comes from a regression kink design that exploits the quasi-experimental variation around the kink in the UI benefit schedule. We find that UI durations are more respo...