Taxation, Public Policy, and Dynamics of Unemployment

This paper provides an overview of the key issues relating to taxation, public policy and the dynamics of unemployment.It takes issue with the widely held view that generous social insurance schemes and the associated highpayroll taxes have been the major cause of the high unemployment rates which have persisted in Europe over thepast 15 years. It puts forward a framework for a theory of adjustment, based on the portfolio theory of the riskaverse firm and the efficiency wage theory of labor markets. This is used to explain why in the onset of a downturn,the hiring rate may lag the layoff rate, thus giving rise to rising unemployment rates. It is also shown to provideguidance as to policies which enhance the ability of firms to bear risks and which reduce costs of hiring and firing.The paper argues that while policies which increase severance or layoff costs may be well intended they mayactually serve to exacerbate the magnitude of employment fluctuations. Similarly, unemployment compensation,which is designed to ease the burden on those who are unemployed, may lead to higher levels of equilibriumunemployment. These programs can be restructured in ways which simultaneously ease the short-run burden ofthose thrown into unemployment, while reducing the adverse impact of these programs on the unemployment rate.     

后疫情时代失业保险基金可持续性与经济调节功能研究

本文在理论分析的基础上,通过构建我国失业保险基金精算模型对新冠肺炎疫情冲击后失业保险基金的可持续性和经济调节功能进行研究,并通过政策仿真研究不同政策参数对失业保险基金周期性平衡的影响.研究发现:第一,新冠肺炎疫情冲击后2020～ 2035年我国失业保险基金当期缺口均在90亿元及以上,其中2020年基金当期收不抵支问题严...     

Environmental Tax Reform in a Small Open Economy With Structural Unemployment

The paper examines the effects of an environmental tax reform in a small open economy with decentralised wage bargaining, monopolistically competitive firms and equilibrium unemployment. There is a tradable and a non-tradable sector and all firms use labour as well as an imported polluting factor of production (energy). A key result is that a tax on energy, recycled to reduce the payroll tax, reduces unemployment if there is a tradable sector wage premium. However, even if energy taxes may boost employment, welfare will not necessarily improve. Numerical simulations suggest that energy taxes in general provide an environmental dividend but also reduce real GDP.     

Long Memory in Turkish Unemployment Rates

In this article we have examined the unemployment rate series in Turkey by using long memory models and in particular employing fractionally integrated techniques. Our results suggest that unemployment in Turkey is highly persistent, with orders of integration equal to or higher than 1 in the majority of the cases. This implies lack of mean reversion and persistence of the shocks. We found evidence in favor of mean reversion in the case of female unemployment and this happens for all the groups of non-agricultural, rural, urban, and youth unemployment series. The possibility of nonlinearities are observed only in the case of female unemployment and the degree of persistence is higher in the cases of female and youth unemployment series. Important policy implications emerge from our empirical results. Thus, for example, positive shocks reducing unemployment will have permanent effects being good for the economy, but negative shocks increasing unemployment will also have permanent effects and strong measures should then be adopted to reduce it. Labor and macroeconomic policies will most likely have long-lasting effects on the unemployment rates.     

Employment and Welfare Effects of a Two-Tier Unemployment Compensation System

In Germany, as in many OECD countries, such as the United Kingdom, unemployment compensation consists of unemployment insurance and unemployment assistance. Unemployment assistance is provided subsequent to the expiration of entitlement to unemployment insurance and is lower. The effects of this two-tier unemployment compensation system are studied in a general equilibrium job search model with endogenous distributions of income, wealth, and employment which is calibrated with regard to the characteristics of the German economy. Our results are as follows: (i) employment is a decreasing function of both unemployment insurance and unemployment assistance. (ii) Aggregate savings are (not) a monotone decreasing function of unemployment assistance (unemployment insurance) payments. (iii) Optimal unemployment compensation payments are found to be a decreasing function over time.     

关于失业保障监测预警系统的研究

建立失业保障监测预警系统,对于政府从宏观上把握失业状况、制定相应的宏观调控政策、保证社会保障体系的良性运行以及社会经济的可持续发展具有重要的理论和实际意义。我国失业保障制度还处在改革和完善之中,对失业保障的统计研究正处于起步阶段,更没有建立失业保障预警系统。因此,在我国构建一种对失业保障状况进行监测并通过信号灯向人们发出警报的监测预警系统十分必要。     

中国失业保险制度改革方向:纳入社会救助——基于历史背景与功能定位的分析

失业保险在建立和长期发展过程中,具有缓和劳资矛盾、天然双向平滑经济波动、提供失业保障和平滑个人收入的基本功能。但随着各国劳动保护及福利制度的发展,失业保险在政治和经济方面的功能减弱,且其失业收入损失补偿功能常常引发失业陷阱,于是各国进行了以促进积极就业为导向的改革。中国失业保险制度曾经为经济体制转型起到了“减震器”的作用。随着劳动保护和社会保障制度的发展和政府就业政策的完善,在二元就业结构、户籍制度、公共部门人力资源管理制度及政府承担就业促进任务的影响下,我国失业保险的政治、经济、失业人口收入补偿、就业促进功能未能有效发挥。在比较了若干改革方案后,本文认为,取消失业保险并将其功能并入社会救助体系是新时代背景下我国失业保险制度的最优改革路径。     

Search Frictions,Labor Supply,and the Asymmetric Business Cycle

We develop a business cycle model that generates asymmetry between peaks and troughs of the unemployment rate and symmetric fluctuations of the participation rate as in the U.S. data. We calibrate the model and find that search frictions are solely responsible for the peak–trough asymmetry. Participation decisions do not generate asymmetry but contribute to the fluctuations in search frictions by changing the size and composition of the pool of job seekers, which in turn affects the tightness ratio and thereby slack in the labor market. The participation rate would be counterfactually asymmetric absent labor supply responses to shocks.     

The Trade-Off between Insurance and Incentives in Differentiated Unemployment Policies

In this paper, I revisit the central trade-off between insurance and incentives in the design of unemployment insurance policies. The generosity of unemployment insurance benefits differs not only across countries, but also across workers within countries. After illustrating some important dimensions of heterogeneity in a cross-country analysis, I extend the standard Baily–Chetty formula to identify the key empirical moments and elasticities required to evaluate the differentiated unemployment policy within a country. I also review some prior work and aim to provide guidance for future work trying to inform the design of unemployment policies.     

On the Political Economy of Low Skilled Immigration and the Welfare State

This paper inquires into the collective decision making on both unemployment insurance and immigration. It is shown that low skill immigration typically increases the contribution rate to the unemployment insurance system. This can translate into higher benefits, the increase of the economy-wide unemployment rate nonwithstanding. The host country allows for immigration only if high skilled natives are sufficiently powerful. Furthermore, political rights of immigrants are restricted to a minimum.     

Ins and Outs of Unemployment in Turkey

This paper analyzes rates of inflow to and outflow from unemployment for Turkey. From 2006 to 2011, the average rate of exiting unemployment (outflow) within a month was 9.5 percent, the average rate of entering unemployment from out of the labor force was 0.1 percent, and the average rate of transiting from employment to unemployment was 1.1 percent. This paper decomposes changes in unemployment into contributions from inflow and outflow rates, revealing that the volatility of inflow rates is the main driving force of the change in the unemployment rate in Turkey. It also shows that incorporating monthly changes in the labor force into the analysis, as opposed to assuming a constant labor force, affects the results quantitatively.     

Fast Rises,Slow Declines: Asymmetric Unemployment Dynamics with Matching Frictions

I argue that the textbook search-and-matching model cannot generate the observed cyclical asymmetry in the unemployment rate. In the United States, the unemployment rate rises quickly and abruptly at the onset of recessions and declines slowly and gradually during expansions. This pattern produces positive skewness in the distribution of unemployment rate changes, while the model generates a counterfactually negative skewness. Moreover, I show that the model's inability to replicate the cyclical asymmetry in the data stands regardless of its ability to generate realistic volatility in unemployment rate fluctuations.     

Household Level Economic Incentives, Unemployment Trap and Job Finding Probability

This paper considers the sensitivity of the household's disposable income with respect to the labour market states and the labour market transitions of unemployed workers. The paper analyses the following questions: (i) which are the determinants of starting wages? (ii) how many unemployed are in the unemployment trap? (iii) how do household level economic incentives affect the conditional probability of finding a job? The empirical analysis is based on individual panel data covering the years 1987–1993 in Finland, when the unemployment rate rose from about 4% to 18%. We have estimated the starting wage equation to calculate the effects of hypothetical re-employment on the household's disposable income and to evaluate the frequency of the unemployment trap. To analyse factors affecting the transition out of unemployment to employment in open labour market, we estimate unemployment duration using a semi-parametric proportional risk model. The paper shows that the impact of the economic incentives, measured by the hypothetical change in household disposable income, on employment is more important in the recession than in the boom.     

Social Security,Unemployment, and Growth

The paper develops an overlapping generations model that highlights interactions between social security, unemployment and growth. The social security system has two components: old age pensions and unemployment insurance. Pensions have a direct effect on economic growth. Both pensions and unemployment benefits influence equilibrium unemployment caused by wage bargaining. Since unemployment deteriorates growth, both types of social security have an indirect negative effect on growth.JEL Code: E24, H55, J51     

Unemployment Clubs in Russian Regions

In this article, we empirically investigate regional unemployment in Russia. We first detect the existence of two unemployment clubs, that is, regions with high (low) unemployment surrounded by regions with high (low) unemployment, and a group that comprises the remaining regions. We then apply a specially designed class of spatial-econometric models to regional data 2005–2012, using difference GMM, and we obtain partial confirmation of our two main hypotheses: (i) spatial effects for the high-high and low-low clubs regions differ significantly; and (ii) the determinants of unemployment of the two clubs significantly differ with respect to those of the remaining regions. Our results have key implications for the national- and regional-level policies.     

Unemployment Risk, the Housing Market and the Effects of Decentralised Redistribution

The paper examines the general equilibrium effects of benefits to the unemployed and the taxes to pay for them in a two country model in which people move to maximise expected utility. Wages are set by unions, and unemployment emerges as an equilibrium phenomenon. Wage setting institutions are found to be important for assessing the welfare effects of redistribution from the employed to the unemployed. The analysis finds that, with monopoly unions, more redistribution tends to repel population from the country increasing redistribution and to reduce welfare in both countries, but the opposite is the case in a model in which wage setting does not depend on unemployment benefits and taxes. These effects are dampened by the combination of risk averse consumers and inelastic housing supply.     

失业保险制度的就业促进效果评估——以内蒙古自治区为例

由于经济发展水平的限制和市场经济体制改革的层次性要求,我国的失业保险制度从建立之初就一直把充分发挥制度的"生活保障"功能作为追求的主要目标,而忽视了失业保险制度的预防失业和就业促进功能。本文以内蒙古自治区为例,运用层次分析法选取了一套较为科学的失业保险制度就业促进效果评估指标,旨在从制度层面分析内蒙古失业保险的就业促进效果。实证研究结果表明,应当建立城镇调查失业率制度、提高失业金替代率、增强就业培训与就业援助的效率、改变参保人群与失业人群错位现象、构建失业保险制度"自动调节机制"、积极探索权力下放和基金投资方式。     

Pollution, Factor Taxation and Unemployment

When consumers choose between clean and dirty goods and the labour market clears, a green tax reform may not bring about a double dividend in the sense of increasing environmental quality and increasing employment. However, when firms choose between clean and dirty factors of production, and when there is unemployment, such a result is very likely to occur. The paper investigates a model of a monopolistic firm where labour and energy are factors of production and trade unions negotiate the wage rate, accepting some unemployment as a result of aggressive wage demands. It is shown that, in such a framework, a green tax reform will boost employment provided it does not increase the net-of-tax wage rate by too much. This is the case when the elasticity of substitution between labour and energy is greater than one, equal to one or not too far below one.     

Labor unemployment risk and firm risk

This paper examines the effect of labor unemployment risk on firm risk. Using unemployment insurance benefits as a proxy for unemployment risk, we find an economically significant positive relation between unemployment risk and firm risk. This positive relation is more pronounced for firms that are more labor-intensive, have a higher layoff propensity and are more financially constrained. While existing literature that employs corporate policy measures such as debt and cash holdings suggests an opposite relationship, our paper presents evidence that the effects stemming from earnings management, earnings quality and reporting quality appear to dominate.     

Unemployment,Government Spending and the Laffer Effect*

The paper studies the effects of income tax rate changes in a general equilibrium model with frictional unemployment. Laffer curve effects, by which a tax rate reduction may increase the level of government spending or its share in output, are shown to be possible under certain conditions. These are the presence of unemployment benefit payments, government budget balance through fiscal spending adjustment and limited quantitative importance of labour reallocation costs. Endogenous government spending acts as a fiscal accelerator if the fiscal burden of unemployment benefit payments is large, but reduces the employment effects of tax rate cuts if it is low.