IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/43132.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Is government’s help for unemployed people helpful for the society? An Empirical Study on Macro Data of Public Unemployment Spending in OECD Nations

Author

Listed:
  • DING, HONG

Abstract

Using panel data of public unemployment expenditure as a percentage of GDP of 34 OECD nations across year 1980-2010, I explore the effect of this ratio on three unemployment outcomes: total unemployment rate, long-term unemployment rate and youth unemployment, as well as labor participation rate and investment rate. After taking into account potential endogeneity of this ratio using Durbin-Wu-Hausman test, I find the data does not support the hypothesized aggregate demand effect of unemployment insurance (UI) expenditure in theory but gives strong support for hypothesized disincentive effect in theory. The estimates indicate that every percentage point increase in public unemployment welfare expenditure relative to GDP leads to 0.9 to 1.1 percentage point increase in total unemployment rate and 4.5 to 4.7 percentage point increase in long term unemployment rate. The distortionary effect of UI program on business is also verified by an estimate that every percentage point increase in this unemployment spending rate is associated with about 2.1 percentage point decrease in investment rate.

Suggested Citation

  • Ding, Hong, 2012. "Is government’s help for unemployed people helpful for the society? An Empirical Study on Macro Data of Public Unemployment Spending in OECD Nations," MPRA Paper 43132, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:43132
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/43132/1/MPRA_paper_43132.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joshua D. Angrist & Alan B. Krueger, 2001. "Instrumental Variables and the Search for Identification: From Supply and Demand to Natural Experiments," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(4), pages 69-85, Fall.
    2. repec:bla:scandj:v:100:y:1998:i:1:p:113-41 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Felbermayr, Gabriel & Prat, Julien & Schmerer, Hans-Jörg, 2011. "Trade and unemployment: What do the data say?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(6), pages 741-758, August.
    4. Lorenzo E Bernal-Verdugo & Davide Furceri & Dominique Guillaume, 2012. "Labor Market Flexibility and Unemployment: New Empirical Evidence of Static and Dynamic Effects," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 54(2), pages 251-273, June.
    5. Jesse Rothstein, 2011. "Unemployment Insurance and Job Search in the Great Recession," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 42(2 (Fall)), pages 143-213.
    6. Andrews,Donald W. K. & Stock,James H. (ed.), 2005. "Identification and Inference for Econometric Models," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521844413, November.
    7. 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.
    8. Lalive, Rafael & Zweimuller, Josef, 2004. "Benefit entitlement and unemployment duration: The role of policy endogeneity," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(12), pages 2587-2616, December.
    9. Congressional Budget Office, 2012. "Unemployment Insurance in the Wake of the Recent Recession," Reports 43734, Congressional Budget Office.
    10. Peter Fredriksson & Bertil Holmlund, 2006. "Improving Incentives in Unemployment Insurance: A Review of Recent Research," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(3), pages 357-386, July.
    11. Card, David & Levine, Phillip B., 2000. "Extended benefits and the duration of UI spells: evidence from the New Jersey extended benefit program," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(1-2), pages 107-138, October.
    12. Congressional Budget Office, 2010. "Policies for Increasing Economic Growth and Employment in 2010 and 2011," Reports 41813, Congressional Budget Office.
    13. Congressional Budget Office, 2012. "Unemployment Insurance in the Wake of the Recent Recession," Reports 43734, Congressional Budget Office.
    14. David R. Howell & Bert M. Azizoglu, 2011. "Unemployment Benefits and Work Incentives: The U.S. Labor Market in the Great Recession (revised)," Working Papers wp257_revised, Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
    15. repec:fth:prinin:455 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Congressional Budget Office, 2012. "Unemployment Insurance in the Wake of the Recent Recession," Reports 43734, Congressional Budget Office.
    17. David R. Howell & Bert M. Azizoglu, 2011. "Unemployment benefits and work incentives: the US labour market in the Great Recession," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 27(2), pages 221-240.
    18. Davidson, Russell & MacKinnon, James G., 1993. "Estimation and Inference in Econometrics," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195060119.
    19. Congressional Budget Office, 2012. "Unemployment Insurance in the Wake of the Recent Recession," Reports 43734, Congressional Budget Office.
    20. Beraldo, Sergio & Montolio, Daniel & Turati, Gilberto, 2009. "Healthy, educated and wealthy: A primer on the impact of public and private welfare expenditures on economic growth," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 38(6), pages 946-956, December.
    21. Bertil Holmlund, 1998. "Unemployment Insurance in Theory and Practice," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 100(1), pages 113-141, March.
    22. Joshua Angrist & Alan Krueger, 2001. "Instrumental Variables and the Search for Identification: From Supply and Demand to Natural Experiments," Working Papers 834, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    23. Harvey S. Rosen, 2008. "Public Finance," Springer Books, in: Readings in Public Choice and Constitutional Political Economy, chapter 22, pages 371-389, Springer.
    24. Congressional Budget Office, 2010. "Policies for Increasing Economic Growth and Employment in 2010 and 2011," Reports 41813, Congressional Budget Office.
    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. Jesse Rothstein & Robert G. Valletta, 2017. "Scraping by: Income and Program Participation After the Loss of Extended Unemployment Benefits," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 36(4), pages 880-908, September.
    2. Ding, Hong, 2012. "Unemployment and Welfare State: What do the Data Tell Us?," MPRA Paper 41921, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Jesse Rothstein, 2011. "Unemployment Insurance and Job Search in the Great Recession," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 42(2 (Fall)), pages 143-213.
    4. Konstantinos Tatsiramos & Jan C. Ours, 2014. "Labor Market Effects Of Unemployment Insurance Design," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(2), pages 284-311, April.
    5. Henry S. Farber & Robert G. Valletta, 2015. "Do Extended Unemployment Benefits Lengthen Unemployment Spells?: Evidence from Recent Cycles in the U.S. Labor Market," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 50(4), pages 873-909.
    6. Bart, COCKX & Jean, RIES, 2004. "The Exhaustion of Unemployment Benefits in Belgium. Does it Enhance the Probability of Employment ?," LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES 2004016, Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES).
    7. Christopher Boone & Arindrajit Dube & Lucas Goodman & Ethan Kaplan, 2021. "Unemployment Insurance Generosity and Aggregate Employment," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 13(2), pages 58-99, May.
    8. Gabriel Chodorow-Reich & Loukas Karabarbounis, 2016. "The Limited Macroeconomic Effects of Unemployment Benefit Extensions," Working Papers 733, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    9. Fredriksson, Peter & Söderström, Martin, 2008. "Do Unemployment Benefits Increase Unemployment? New Evidence on an Old Question," IZA Discussion Papers 3570, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Zamanzadeh, Akbar & Chan, Marc K. & Ehsani, Mohammad Ali & Ganjali, Mojtaba, 2020. "Unemployment duration, Fiscal and monetary policies, and the output gap: How do the quantile relationships look like?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 613-632.
    11. Camille Landais, 2015. "Assessing the Welfare Effects of Unemployment Benefits Using the Regression Kink Design," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 7(4), pages 243-278, November.
    12. Tony Caporale & Marc Poitras, 2020. "The trouble with naïve Keynesianism," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(2), pages 259-276, June.
    13. Mathias Dolls & Clemens Fuest & Dirk Neumann & Andreas Peichl, 2018. "An unemployment insurance scheme for the euro area? A comparison of different alternatives using microdata," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 25(1), pages 273-309, February.
    14. Rafael Lalive & Jan Van Ours & Josef Zweimuller, 2006. "How Changes in Financial Incentives Affect the Duration of Unemployment," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 73(4), pages 1009-1038.
    15. Rafael Lalive & Jan Ours & Josef Zweimüller, 2011. "Equilibrium unemployment and the duration of unemployment benefits," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 24(4), pages 1385-1409, October.
    16. Ding, Hong, 2012. "Economic growth and welfare state: a debate of econometrics," MPRA Paper 39685, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Fredriksson, Peter & Söderström, Martin, 2020. "The equilibrium impact of unemployment insurance on unemployment: Evidence from a non-linear policy rule," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 187(C).
    18. Stefan Groot & Henri de Groot, 2011. "Wage inequality in the Netherlands: Evidence, trends and explanations," CPB Discussion Paper 186.rdf, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    19. Lionel Cottier & Kathrin Degen & Rafael Lalive, 2020. "Can unemployment benefit cuts improve employment and earnings?," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 59(2), pages 659-699, August.
    20. Milan Vodopivec, 2013. "Introducing unemployment insurance to developing countries," IZA Journal of Labor Policy, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 2(1), pages 1-23, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    unemployment insurance; long term unemployment rate; Durbin-Wu-Hausman test;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
    • H53 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Welfare Programs

    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:pra:mprapa:43132. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.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.