Native welfare losses from high skilled immigration

This paper explores the effects of high skilled immigration to a host country with unionized low skilled labor and an unemployment insurance scheme. We show that such immigration can create a negative immigration surplus due to adverse effects on low skilled employment, provided that fiscal redistribution is not too intense and the elasticity between high and low skilled labor is high as empirical evidence suggests.     

Time inconsistency as a rationale for public unemployment insurance

A role for public unemployment insurance is developed based on the inability of the government to commit to a future rate of unemployment. This is illustrated using a model in which a minimum wage policy combined with unemployment insurance is welfare-improving. Unemployment insurance could be decentralized to the private sector if the government could commit to a minimum wage. However, if not, a government that acts in the interest of the workers will have an incentive to increase the minimum wage to exploit private insurers. In the absence of commitment, an equilibrium with private unemployment insurance will not exist.     

Unemployment insurance in a three-state model of the labor market

The paper extends the model of Krusell et al. (2010) to study the welfare effects of unemployment insurance. The model unemployment insurance program includes four realistic features: 1) a 50% replacement rate up to a benefit cap; 2) finite duration of eligibility during a jobless spell; 3) limited eligibility; and 4) and an imperfectly monitored job search requirement. The model is parameterized to fit the size of scope of unemployment insurance in the United States. Removing unemployment insurance from the model leads to only a 0.1% consumption equivalent increase in average welfare. Simplifying assumptions about the structure of unemployment insurance, such as allowing all job losers to receive benefits, lead to much larger welfare effects similar to the effects found in the past literature. Understanding the welfare effects of unemployment insurance requires careful modeling of the structure of the program.     

中国失业保险支出水平的测度模型与实证分析

中国失业保险制度应该保持合理的支出水平,衡量标准主要看其是否为失业者提供了适度的收入保障以及是否对就业起到积极的促进作用。本文建立了测量失业保险支出水平的数理模型,根据国外典型国家的经验数据大体确定了失业保险支出水平的适度界限,并对中国现实的失业保险支出水平及其影响因素进行了分析,最后提出了完善失业保险制度以及合理提高失业保险支出水平的政策建议。     

Risk aversion and inequity aversion in demand for unemployment benefits

This paper is an empirical study of what motivates net contributors to support redistributive policies. While studies in the area have tended to consider broad measures of inequality and support for redistribution in general, we focus on a single, salient relationship between local unemployment rates and demand for spending on unemployment benefits. Using a particularity of the Spanish labour market, we estimate how workers’ stated preferences for unemployment benefits spending respond to changes in the local unemployment rate. We then decompose this response into the part explained by risk aversion, and thus demand for insurance, and the part explained by inequity aversion. Our results suggest that increases in local unemployment rates lead to increased demand by workers for unemployment benefits spending. Moreover, our results are consistent with an insurance motive driving this relationship but provide little support for inequity aversion. Our results suggest that studies of the relationship between inequality and demand for redistribution might benefit from considering both the source and measure of the inequality and the instrument of redistribution.     

失业保险与公司财务杠杆

我国劳动力市场化程度日益加深导致劳动者职业转换愈加频繁,失业保险的作用日益突出。本文探究了失业保险金水平对企业财务杠杆的影响。运用2009—2019年上市公司数据进行实证分析,结果发现失业保险金上升会导致公司财务杠杆下降。渠道检验显示,提高失业保险金可以降低员工失业风险溢酬,公司劳动力成本下降,公司有更多自由现金流和盈利进行内源融资和偿还债务,公司财务杠杆下降。进一步分析发现,失业保险金的作用在失业率高的地区更加显著。主要结果在分别运用《社会保险法》和《关于调整失业保险金标准的指导意见》构造双重差分模型和工具变量解决内生性问题、更改模型设置、排除投资水平影响、删除特殊省份、更换样本期间后,依然成立。本文结果说明加大失业保险保障力度有助于降低企业财务风险。     

A quantitative analysis of unemployment benefit extensions

Extensions of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits have been implemented in response to the Great Recession. This paper measures the effect of these extensions on the unemployment rate using a calibrated structural model featuring job search and consumption-saving decisions, skill depreciation, and UI eligibility. The ongoing UI benefit extensions are found to have raised the unemployment rate by 1.4 percentage points, which is about 30% of the observed increase since 2007. Moreover, the contribution of the UI benefit extensions to the elevated unemployment rate increased during 2009–2011; while the number of vacancies recovered, the successive extensions kept search intensity down.     

Can an Unemployment Insurance System Generate Multiple Natural Rates?

This article studies some macroeconomic consequences of the financing of an unemployment insurance scheme. Under a balanced-budget rule, when both taxes and unemployment benefits are proportional to wages, the existence of multiple natural rates of unemployment is a generic property of the matching model. Government can lead the economy to a high equilibrium by fixing the rate of tax on wages and then setting the replacement ratio so that its expenditure matches its receipts.     

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.     

The Swedish State unemployment insurance and the reinsurance problem of the funds

Abstract

In 1901 the town of Gent appropriated a municipal grant to societies paying benefit to their members in case of unemployment. The decision was founded on a committee report principally written by the lawyer Louis Varlez. The societies should claim individual contributions of the members constituting the right to unemployment allowance under certain conditions. In order to prevent a dissipating risk selection the sphere of activity of a society should join with some society existing before. Such societies had been erected at several places as well in Belgium as in other states, in Gent as early as in 1867. In most cases they were attached to trade unions. It may thus be said that a subsidized unemployment insurance was — for the first time — introduced in Gent 1901. The principles applied are usually called the »Gentsystem». In general accordance with this system state subsidized unemployment insurance was introduced in France 1905, in Norway 1906 and in Denmark 1907. Later several states have established unemployment insurance on a voluntary basis. In modern voluntary state insurance, however, a decisivestress is laid upon the fact that the allowance shall be regulated in accordance with the general rules for public relief of unemployment. Some conditions of the insurance scheme are thus compulsorily laid down in the regulations concerning the subsidy. In some states the unemployment insurance has been wholly established on a compulsory basis. For the first time a compulsory insurance was introduced in England in 1911 covering certain occupational groups. Compulsory unemployment insurance has then been erected in Italy 1919, Poland 1924, Bulgaria 1925 and Norway 1938. In 1938 a law bearing on a change of the voluntary unemployment insurance of Belgium to a compulsory one is being prepared.     

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.     

Was spricht eigentlich gegen eine private Arbeitslosenversicherung?

This article wants to base the current discussion about the privatization of unemployment insurance on a perspective of insurance economics. The arguments against private unemployment insurance are separated in two prospects: insurance technique and social policy. Therefore, the mixing of objective-technical and normative arguments, which is widely spread in the literature, is broken down. It is shown that the only criterion, which holds against private unemployment insurance, is that of “relative poorness”. Consequently, from a social policy perspective the monetary burden of actuarial premiums on people at high and medium risk is not acceptable. Arguments like positively correlated risks, moral hazard, insufficient differentiation of premiums and collectively underestimated individual unemployment risks appear to be poorly valid. As a solution of the problem of “relative poorness” a new outline for privatization of unemployment insurance is presented. The proposal focuses on a combination of private unemployment and pension insurance.     

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。     

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。     

Unemployment insurance and capital accumulation

In this paper, I examine a model economy with production, search, and unemployment insurance. The introduction of capital into the economy of Wang and Williamson (J. Monetary Econom. 49(7)(2001)1337) generates the result that optimal replacement ratios are always zero. The result arises from the decline in aggregate activity caused by unemployment insurance: both capital and labor inputs to production fall when benefits rise. Unlike most of the literature, I compute explicitly the cost of the transition path; agents are made better off by switching to a steady state with no unemployment insurance, but the welfare gain is approximately cut in half. Only the very poor and unemployed suffer welfare losses along the transition path. I then briefly investigate the implications of negative replacement ratios.     

Unemployment insurance benefits and income smoothing

Labor unemployment insurance reduces unemployment concerns. We argue that these benefits moderate incentives to smooth earnings to reduce employees’ concerns about unemployment risk. Using exogenous variations in unemployment insurance benefits, we find evidence consistent with this argument. We also find that the link between unemployment insurance benefits and income smoothing is stronger when there is higher unemployment risk and when the firm is likely to employ more low-wage workers, who find unemployment insurance benefits especially useful. Our paper contributes to the literature by showing that public policy decisions such as unemployment insurance have significant, albeit probably unintended, externalities on corporate financial reporting.     

Unemployment insurance with a hidden labor market

We consider the problem of optimal unemployment insurance (UI) in a repeated moral hazard framework. Unlike existing literature, unemployed individuals can secretly participate in a hidden labor market. This extension modifies the standard problem in three dimensions. First, it imposes an endogenous lower bound for the lifetime utility that a contract can deliver. Second, it breaks the identity between unemployment payments and consumption. And third, it hardens the encouragement of search effort. The optimal unemployment insurance system in an economy with a hidden labor market is simple, with an initial phase in which payments are relatively flat during unemployment and with no payments for long-term unemployed individuals. This scheme differs substantially from the one prescribed without a hidden labor market and resembles unemployment protection programs in many countries.     

Improving the Equity-Efficiency Trade-Off: Mandatory Savings Accounts for Social Insurance

In the modern welfare state a substantial part of an individual's tax bill is transferred back to the same individual taxpayer in the form of social transfers. This provides a rationale for financing part of social insurance through mandatory savings accounts. We analyze the behavioral and welfare effects of compulsory savings accounts in an intertemporal model with uncertainty, involuntary unemployment, endogenous retirement decisions, credit constraints, and heterogeneous agents. We show that the introduction of (early) retirement and unemployment accounts generates a Pareto improvement by enabling the government to provide lifetime income insurance and liquidity insurance in a more efficient manner.     

美国失业保险税对我国的启示

美国的失业保险是联邦和州政府的合作项目,它通过失业保险税来融资。其失业保险税立法及执行保障层次高,税制设计科学合理。建议我国在借鉴美国失业保险税制的基础上,尽快颁布《社会保险法》,建立中央和地方两种失业保险税,在具体规定上给予地方一定的自主权,采用失业保险税率的经验评估方法,以进一步改革和完善我国的失业保险缴贲制度。     

个人保险、消费和储蓄决策

本文通过失业保险,研究了家庭保险、消费和储蓄的决策问题。在连续时间情形下,本文将随机问题转化为确定性问题来考察,运用最优控制理论,考察了家庭的决策过程。分析了购买保险对于个人消费和储蓄决策的影响,以及如何通过保险稳定其财富和提高终生效用,同时探讨了人均消费和人均资本存量的动态变化过程,得到了关于经济增长路径的结论。