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Liquidity and insurance for the unemployed

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Author Info
Robert Shimer
Iván Werning

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Abstract

We study the optimal design of unemployment insurance for workers sampling job opportunities over time. We focus on the optimal timing of benefits and the desirability of allowing workers to freely access a riskless asset. When workers have constant absolute risk aversion preferences, it is optimal to use a very simple policy: a constant benefit during unemployment, a constant tax during employment that does not depend on the duration of the spell, and free access to savings using a riskless asset. Away from this benchmark, for constant relative risk aversion preferences, the welfare gains of more elaborate policies are minuscule. Our results highlight two largely distinct roles for policy toward the unemployed: (a) ensuring workers have sufficient liquidity to smooth their consumption; and (b) providing unemployment benefits that serve as insurance against the uncertain duration of unemployment spells.

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Paper provided by Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis in its series Staff Report with number 366.

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Date of creation: 2005
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Handle: RePEc:fip:fedmsr:366

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Keywords: Insurance;

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This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports: References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Martin Feldstein & Daniel Altman, 1998. "Unemployment Insurance Savings Accounts," NBER Working Papers 6860, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Meyer, Bruce D, 1990. "Unemployment Insurance and Unemployment Spells," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(4), pages 757-82, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  3. Spear, Stephen E & Srivastava, Sanjay, 1987. "On Repeated Moral Hazard with Discounting," Review of Economic Studies, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 54(4), pages 599-617, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Rogerson, William P, 1985. "Repeated Moral Hazard," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(1), pages 69-76, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Steven Shavell & Laurence Weiss, 1978. "The Optimal Payment of Unemployment Insurance Benefits over Time," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 503, Cowles Foundation, Yale University. [Downloadable!]
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  6. Blanchard, Olivier & Wolfers, Justin, 2000. "The Role of Shocks and Institutions in the Rise of European Unemployment: The Aggregate Evidence," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 110(462), pages C1-33, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  7. Jonathan Gruber, 1994. "The Consumption Smoothing Benefits of Unemployment Insurance," NBER Working Papers 4750, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  8. Pissarides, Christopher A, 1985. "Short-run Equilibrium Dynamics of Unemployment Vacancies, and Real Wages," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(4), pages 676-90, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. Prescott, Edward C & Townsend, Robert M, 1984. "Pareto Optima and Competitive Equilibria with Adverse Selection and Moral Hazard," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(1), pages 21-45, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  10. Hopenhayn, Hugo A & Nicolini, Juan Pablo, 1997. "Optimal Unemployment Insurance," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(2), pages 412-38, April.
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  11. Lars Ljungqvist & Thomas J. Sargent, 1998. "The European Unemployment Dilemma," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(3), pages 514-550, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  12. McCall, John J, 1970. "Economics of Information and Job Search," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 84(1), pages 113-26, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  13. Feldstein, Martin & Poterba, James, 1984. "Unemployment insurance and reservation wages," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(1-2), pages 141-167. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  14. Martin Feldstein, 2005. "Rethinking Social Insurance," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 1-24, March. [Downloadable!]
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  15. Allen, Franklin, 1985. "Repeated principal-agent relationships with lending and borrowing," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 17(1-2), pages 27-31. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  16. Mikhail Golosov & Narayana Kocherlakota & Aleh Tsyvinski, 2003. "Optimal Indirect and Capital Taxation," Review of Economic Studies, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 70(3), pages 569-587, 07. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  17. Gruber, Jonathan, 1997. "The Consumption Smoothing Benefits of Unemployment Insurance," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(1), pages 192-205, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  18. Katz, Lawrence F. & Meyer, Bruce D., 1990. "The impact of the potential duration of unemployment benefits on the duration of unemployment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 45-72, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  19. Lucas, Robert Jr. & Prescott, Edward C., 1974. "Equilibrium search and unemployment," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 188-209, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  20. Aiyagari, S Rao, 1994. "Uninsured Idiosyncratic Risk and Aggregate Saving," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 109(3), pages 659-84, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  21. Wang, Cheng & Williamson, Stephen, 1996. "Unemployment insurance with moral hazard in a dynamic economy," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(1), pages 1-41, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  22. Cole, Harold L & Kocherlakota, Narayana R, 2001. "Efficient Allocations with Hidden Income and Hidden Storage," Review of Economic Studies, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 68(3), pages 523-42, July.
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Full references

Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Rasmus Lentz, 2009. "Optimal Unemployment Insurance in an Estimated Job Search Model with Savings," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 12(1), pages 37-57, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. David Card & Raj Chetty & Andrea Weber, 2006. "Cash-on-Hand and Competing Models of Intertemporal Behavior: New Evidence from the Labor Market," NBER Working Papers 12639, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  3. Patrick Kehoe & Varadarajan V. Chari, 2006. "Modern Macroeconomics in Practice: How Theory is Shaping Policy," NBER Working Papers 12476, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  4. Nicola Pavoni & Giovanni L. Violante, 2005. "Optimal welfare-to-work programs," Discussion Paper / Institute for Empirical Macroeconomics 143, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  5. Hairault, Jean-Olivier & Langot, François & Ménard, Sébastien & Sopraseuth, Thepthida, 2009. "Optimal Unemployment Insurance for Older Workers," IZA Discussion Papers 4071, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). [Downloadable!]
  6. Pontus Rendahl, 2007. "Asset Based Unemployment Insurance," Economics Working Papers ECO2007/15, European University Institute. [Downloadable!]
  7. Robert Shimer & Ivan Werning, 2006. "Reservation Wages and Unemployment Insurance," NBER Working Papers 12618, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  8. Alex Edmans & Xavier Gabaix & Tomasz Sadzik & Yuliy Sannikov, 2009. "Dynamic Incentive Accounts," NBER Working Papers 15324, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. Raj Chetty, 2008. "Moral Hazard vs. Liquidity and Optimal Unemployment Insurance," NBER Working Papers 13967, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  10. Robert Shimer & Iván Werning, 2006. "On the Optimal Timing of Benefits with Heterogeneous Workers and Human Capital Depreciation," NBER Working Papers 12230, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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