IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/restud/v90y2023i5p2439-2480..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Unemployment Insurance in Macroeconomic Stabilization

Author

Listed:
  • Rohan Kekre

Abstract

I study unemployment insurance (UI) in general equilibrium with incomplete markets, search frictions, and nominal rigidities. An increase in generosity raises the aggregate demand for consumption if the unemployed have a higher marginal propensity to consume than the employed or if agents precautionary save in light of future income risk. This raises output and employment unless monetary policy raises the nominal interest rate. In an analysis of the U.S. economy over 2008–2014, UI benefit extensions had a contemporaneous output multiplier around 1. The unemployment rate would have been as much as 0.4 pp higher absent these extensions.

Suggested Citation

  • Rohan Kekre, 2023. "Unemployment Insurance in Macroeconomic Stabilization," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 90(5), pages 2439-2480.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:restud:v:90:y:2023:i:5:p:2439-2480.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/restud/rdac080
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Emmanuel Farhi & Iván Werning, 2019. "Monetary Policy, Bounded Rationality, and Incomplete Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(11), pages 3887-3928, November.
    2. Lee, Kangoh, 2022. "Unemployment insurance, mobile capital, output, and distributive effects," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    3. Philipp Mohl & Gilles Mourre & Klara Stovicek, 2019. "Automatic Fiscal Stabilisers in the EU: Size and Effectiveness," European Economy - Economic Briefs 045, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    4. Moyen, Stéphane & Stähler, Nikolai & Winkler, Fabian, 2019. "Optimal unemployment insurance and international risk sharing," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 144-171.
    5. Nikolaos Kokonas & Paulo Santos Monteiro, 2023. "Self-fulfilling labor wedge fluctuations and unemployment insurance," Discussion Papers 2313, Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM).
    6. Bauermann, Tom, 2020. "Governmental policies to reduce unemployment during recessions: Insights from an ABM," Ruhr Economic Papers 847, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    7. Taehyun Kim & Quoc H Nguyen, 2020. "The Effect of Public Spending on Private Investment," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 24(2), pages 415-451.
    8. Acosta, Miguel & Mueller, Andreas I. & Nakamura, Emi & Steinsson, Jón, 2023. "Macroeconomic Effects of UI Extensions at Short and Long Durations," IZA Discussion Papers 16400, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. Min-Hyuk Cho & Chan-Goo Yi, 2022. "Adaptive Social Innovation Derived from Digital Economy and Its Impact on Society and Policy," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(6), pages 1-20, March.
    10. Tomer Ifergane, 2022. "Time to Say Goodbye: The Macroeconomic Implications of Termination Notice," Discussion Papers 2212, Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM).
    11. Dengler, Thomas & Gehrke, Britta, 2021. "Short-Time Work and Precautionary Savings," IZA Discussion Papers 14329, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Camille Landais & Pascal Michaillat & Emmanuel Saez, 2018. "A Macroeconomic Approach to Optimal Unemployment Insurance: Applications," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 10(2), pages 182-216, May.
    13. Ragnar Enger Juelsrud & Ella Getz Wold, 2023. "The importance of unemployment risk for individual savings," Working Papers 06/2023, Centre for Household Finance and Macroeconomic Research (HOFIMAR), BI Norwegian Business School.
    14. Morten O Ravn & Vincent Sterk, 2021. "Macroeconomic Fluctuations with HANK & SAM: an Analytical Approach," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 19(2), pages 1162-1202.
    15. Andreas Hornstein & Marios Karabarbounis & Andre Kurmann & Etienne Lale & Lien Ta, 2023. "Disincentive Effects of Unemployment Insurance Benefits," Working Paper 23-11, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
    16. Gabriel Chodorow-Reich & Loukas Karabarbounis, 2016. "The Limited Macroeconomic Effects of Unemployment Benefit Extensions," Working Papers 733, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    17. Garin, Andrew, 2019. "Putting America to work, where? Evidence on the effectiveness of infrastructure construction as a locally targeted employment policy," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 108-131.
    18. Carreño Bustos, José Gabo, 2023. "Flexible Contracts as Business Cycle Stabilizers," Discussion Paper 2023-007, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    19. Nils Mattis Gornemann, 2018. "HANK meets Ramsey: Optimal Coordination of Monetary and Labor Market Policies," 2018 Meeting Papers 1252, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    20. Popp, Aaron, 2017. "Unemployment insurance in a three-state model of the labor market," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 142-157.
    21. Rubén Domínguez Díaz, 2021. "Hiring Stimulus and Precautionary Savings in a Liquidity Trap," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 072, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Unemployment insurance; Aggregate demand; Marginal propensity to consume; Precautionary saving;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D52 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium - - - Incomplete Markets
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search
    • J65 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment Insurance; Severance Pay; Plant Closings

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:restud:v:90:y:2023:i:5:p:2439-2480.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/restud .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.