Davidson and Matusz extend the traditional analysis of international trade to allow for labor markets characterized by workers whose labor-market experiences are punctuated by spells of involuntary unemployment. They demonstrate that such extensions are easily accomplished and that they provide...

We translate the results of the three reemployment bonus experiments that were conducted during the 1980s into (a) impacts of a 10-percentage point increase in the Unemployment Insurance (UI) replacement rate on the expected duration of unemployment; and (b) impacts of adding 1 week to the...

An array of innovative policies has been suggested to address more effectively the needs of dislocated workers. In this paper, we model and simulate the impacts of a wage-rate subsidy (or salary supplement) program in which a dislocated worker who becomes reemployed would receive a payment equal...

We investigate the design of an optimal Unemployment Insurance program using an equilibrium search and matching model calibrated using data from the reemployment bonus experiments and secondary sources. We examine (a) the optimal potential duration of UI benefits, (b) the optimal UI replacement...

This paper extends earlier research on optimal unemployment insurance (UI) by developing an equilibrium search model that encompasses simultaneously several theoretical and institutional features that have been treated one-by-one (or not at all) in previous discussions of optimal UI. In...

This monograph provides a relatively nontechnical summary of the prominent theories of unemployment that have emerged since 1960: search, disequilibrium, implicit contracts, efficiency wage, and insider/outsider models.