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The Implications of Labor Market Heterogeneity on Unemployment Insurance Design

Author

Abstract
We digitize state-level and time-varying unemployment insurance (UI) laws on eligibility, payment amount, and payment duration and combine them with microdata to estimate UI eligibility, take-up, and replacement rates at the individual level. We document how income and wealth levels affect unemployment risk, eligibility, take-up, and replacement rates over the course of unemployment. We evaluate whether these findings are important for shaping UI policy design using a general-equilibrium incomplete-markets model with a frictional labor market that matches our empirical findings. We show that a nested model that fails to match these findings yields a substantially less generous optimal UI policy.

Suggested Citation

  • Serdar Birinci & Kurt See, 2024. "The Implications of Labor Market Heterogeneity on Unemployment Insurance Design," Working Papers 2024-026, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, revised 18 Nov 2024.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedlwp:98801
    DOI: 10.20955/wp.2024.026
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    unemployment insurance; fiscal policy; household behavior; job search;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household
    • 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

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