Die Chancen und Risiken eines Experience rating in der Arbeitslosenversicherung

Rainer Eppel and Helmut Mahringer examine the opportunities and risks of different design variants of an experience rating for unemployment insurance. The background is the finding that unemployment insurance financed by uniform employer contributions has the disadvantage of producing undesirable redistribution effects and of providing incentives for more temporary layoffs. Studies show for the US, Canada and some European countries that temporary layoffs are responsible for a substantial proportion of unemployment. An experience rating in the form of experience- and risk-based employer contributions offers the opportunity to avoid excessive temporary layoffs and to reduce unemployment as well as the consequential costs for unemployment insurance. Risk factors that should be taken into account in the structuring of contributions are, in particular, excessive restrictions on the companies’ flexibility, a worsening of corporate crises and the inhibition of new hirings at the expense of job opportunities for the unemployed.