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Optimal unemployment insurance design: time limits, monitoring, or workfare?

Author

Listed:
  • Fredriksson, Peter

    (Nationalekonomiska institutionen)

  • Holmlund, Bertil

    (Uppsala University)

Abstract

This paper analyses crucial design features of unemployment insurance (UI) policies. We examine three different means of improving the efficiency of UI: the duration of benefit payments, monitoring in conjunction with sanctions, and workfare. To that end we develop a quantitative model of equilibrium unemployment. The model features worker heterogeneity in preferences for leisure. The numerical analysis suggests that a system with monitoring and sanctions restores search incentives most effectively, since it brings additional incentives to search actively so as to avoid the sanction. Therefore, the UI provider can offer a more generous UI replacement rate in a system with monitoring and sanctions than in the other two systems. Workfare appears to be inferior to the other two systems.

Suggested Citation

  • Fredriksson, Peter & Holmlund, Bertil, 2005. "Optimal unemployment insurance design: time limits, monitoring, or workfare?," Working Paper Series 2005:13, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2005_013
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Unemployment insurance; search equilibrium; time limits; monitoring and sanctions; workfare;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search
    • J68 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Public Policy

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