IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eve/wpaper/09-03.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Search frictions, real wage rigidities and theoptimal design of unemployment insurance: a study in a DSGE framework

Author

Listed:
  • Julien Albertini

    (Centre d’Études des politiques Économiques de l’Université d’Evry (EPEE))

  • Xavier Fairise

    (Centre d’Études des politiques Économiques de l’Université d’Evry (EPEE))

Abstract

In this paper, we feature the optimal unemployment benefits financing scheme when the economy is subject to labor market failures characterized by search frictions and wages rigidity. We show how policy instruments should interact with labor market imperfections. The US unemployment insurance financing is such that firms are taxes in proportion of their layoffs. The question of the optimal tax schedule naturally arises. Using the DSGE methodology, we investigate the optimal design of the unemployment benefits financing scheme. The welfare gains and the stabilizing effects of this policy are evaluated. If unemployment benefits and layoff taxes are chosen in an appropriate way, welfare and labor market performances can be improved. Search externalities and wage rigidities cause sizeable welfare losses and influence the optimal design of the financing scheme. Without wage rigidities the efficient layoff tax corresponds to the expected fiscal cost of an unemployed worker. Conversely, when wages are rigid, the cost firms should support is much higher.

Suggested Citation

  • Julien Albertini & Xavier Fairise, 2009. "Search frictions, real wage rigidities and theoptimal design of unemployment insurance: a study in a DSGE framework," Documents de recherche 09-03, Centre d'Études des Politiques Économiques (EPEE), Université d'Evry Val d'Essonne.
    • Handle: RePEc:eve:wpaper:09-03
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.univ-evry.fr/fileadmin/mediatheque/ueve-institutionnel/03_Recherche/laboratoires/Epee/wp/09-03R.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Harding, Don & Pagan, Adrian, 2006. "Synchronization of cycles," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 132(1), pages 59-79, May.
    2. Mortensen, Dale & Pissarides, Christopher, 2011. "Job Creation and Job Destruction in the Theory of Unemployment," Ekonomicheskaya Politika / Economic Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, vol. 1, pages 1-19.
    3. Kim, Jinill & Kim, Sunghyun Henry, 2003. "Spurious welfare reversals in international business cycle models," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 471-500, August.
    4. L'Haridon, Olivier & Malherbet, Franck, 2009. "Employment protection reform in search economies," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(3), pages 255-273, April.
    5. Zanetti, Francesco, 2011. "Labor market institutions and aggregate fluctuations in a search and matching model," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(5), pages 644-658, June.
    6. repec:wop:calsdi:97-23 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Joseph, G. & Pierrard, O. & Sneessens, H. R., 2004. "Job turnover, unemployment and labor market institutions," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(4), pages 451-468, August.
    8. Olivier J. Blanchard & Jean Tirole, 2008. "The Joint Design of Unemployment Insurance and Employment Protection: A First Pass," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 6(1), pages 45-77, March.
    9. Schmitt-Grohe, Stephanie & Uribe, Martin, 2004. "Solving dynamic general equilibrium models using a second-order approximation to the policy function," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 755-775, January.
    10. Faia, Ester, 2008. "Optimal monetary policy rules with labor market frictions," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(5), pages 1600-1621, May.
    11. Card, David & Levine, Phillip B., 1994. "Unemployment insurance taxes and the cyclical and seasonal properties of unemployment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 1-29, January.
    12. Cahuc, Pierre & Malherbet, Franck, 2004. "Unemployment compensation finance and labor market rigidity," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(3-4), pages 481-501, March.
    13. Garey Ramey & Wouter J. den Haan & Joel Watson, 2000. "Job Destruction and Propagation of Shocks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(3), pages 482-498, June.
    14. Christoffel, Kai & Linzert, Tobias, 2005. "The role of real wage rigidity and labor market frictions for unemployment and inflation dynamics," Working Paper Series 556, European Central Bank.
    15. Robert Shimer, 2005. "The Cyclical Behavior of Equilibrium Unemployment and Vacancies," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 25-49, March.
    16. Gerhard Bry & Charlotte Boschan, 1971. "Cyclical Analysis of Time Series: Selected Procedures and Computer Programs," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number bry_71-1.
    17. Andolfatto, David, 1996. "Business Cycles and Labor-Market Search," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(1), pages 112-132, March.
    18. Krause, Michael U. & Lubik, Thomas A., 2006. "The cyclical upgrading of labor and on-the-job search," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(4), pages 459-477, August.
    19. Mirko Abbritti; Sebastian Weber, 2008. "Labor Market Rigidities and the Business Cycle: Price vs. Quantity Restricting Institutions," IHEID Working Papers 01-2008, Economics Section, The Graduate Institute of International Studies, revised Jan 2008.
    20. Gerhard Bry & Charlotte Boschan, 1971. "Foreword to "Cyclical Analysis of Time Series: Selected Procedures and Computer Programs"," NBER Chapters, in: Cyclical Analysis of Time Series: Selected Procedures and Computer Programs, pages -1, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Albertini, Julien & Fairise, Xavier, 2013. "Search frictions, real wage rigidities and the optimal design of unemployment insurance," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 37(9), pages 1796-1813.
    2. Julien Albertini & Xavier Fairise, 2009. "Optimal unemployment benefit financing scheme : A transatlantic comparison," Documents de recherche 09-01, Centre d'Études des Politiques Économiques (EPEE), Université d'Evry Val d'Essonne.
    3. Christoffel, Kai & Costain, James & de Walque, Gregory & Kuester, Keith & Linzert, Tobias & Millard, Stephen & Pierrard, Olivier, 2009. "Inflation dynamics with labour market matching: assessing alternative specifications," Bank of England working papers 375, Bank of England.
    4. Ahrens, Steffen & Nejati, Nooshin & Pfeiffer, Philipp Ludwig, 2015. "Layoff Taxes, Unemployment Insurance, and Business Cycle Fluctuations," VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy 112807, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    5. Faia, Ester, 2008. "Optimal monetary policy rules with labor market frictions," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(5), pages 1600-1621, May.
    6. L'Haridon, Olivier & Malherbet, Franck, 2009. "Employment protection reform in search economies," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(3), pages 255-273, April.
    7. Holt Richard, 2008. "Job Reallocation, Unemployment and Hours in a New Keynesian Model," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 8(1), pages 1-47, August.
    8. Faia, Ester, 2009. "Ramsey monetary policy with labor market frictions," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(4), pages 570-581, May.
    9. Lechthaler, Wolfgang & Merkl, Christian & Snower, Dennis J., 2010. "Monetary persistence and the labor market: A new perspective," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 34(5), pages 968-983, May.
    10. Kurozumi, Takushi & Van Zandweghe, Willem, 2010. "Labor market search, the Taylor principle, and indeterminacy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(7), pages 851-858, October.
    11. Antonella Trigari, 2006. "The Role of Search Frictions and Bargaining for Inflation Dynamics," Working Papers 304, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    12. Ahrens, Steffen & Wesselbaum, Dennis, 2009. "On the introduction of firing costs," Kiel Working Papers 1559, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    13. Régis Barnichon, 2007. "Productivity, Aggregate Demand and Unemployment Fluctuations," CEP Discussion Papers dp0819, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    14. Shigeru Fujita & Garey Ramey, 2012. "Exogenous vs. endogenous separation," Working Papers 12-2, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    15. Albertini, Julien & Fairise, Xavier & Terriau, Anthony, 2023. "Unemployment insurance, recalls, and experience rating," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    16. Arseneau, David M. & Chugh, Sanjay K., 2008. "Optimal fiscal and monetary policy with costly wage bargaining," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(8), pages 1401-1414, November.
    17. Abo-Zaid, Salem, 2013. "Optimal monetary policy and downward nominal wage rigidity in frictional labor markets," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 345-364.
    18. Bastian Schulz, 2015. "Wage Rigidity and Labor Market Dynamics with Sorting," ifo Working Paper Series 199, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.
    19. Campolmi, Alessia & Faia, Ester, 2011. "Labor market institutions and inflation volatility in the euro area," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 35(5), pages 793-812, May.
    20. Lochner Benjamin, 2024. "Employment Protection in Dual Labor Markets: Any Amplification of Macroeconomic Shocks?," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 24(1), pages 249-304, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    DSGE models; search and matching friction; layoff tax; wage rigidities;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E61 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Policy Objectives; Policy Designs and Consistency; Policy Coordination
    • E65 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Studies of Particular Policy Episodes
    • J63 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Turnover; Vacancies; Layoffs
    • 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:eve:wpaper:09-03. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Samuel Nosel (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/epevrfr.html .

    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.