Financing Unemployment Benefits: Dismissal versus Employment Taxes

This paper investigates the effects of using dismissal taxes to finance unemployment benefits. We compare dismissal and employment taxes in a model with search frictions. Employment taxes give rise to externalities because firms do not take into account the effects their dismissal decisions have on others. By introducing dismissal taxes to finance unemployment insurance, these externalities can partly be internalized. Taking into account the budget of the unemployment insurance, employment taxes can be reduced by more than necessary to offset the adverse effect of dismissal taxes on the firm value. The introduction of dismissal taxes leads to higher job creation and lower unemployment, in contrast to standard results concerning employment protection.