This paper investigates how a mandatory activation program in Denmark affects the job finding rate of unemployed workers.The activation program was introduced in an experimental setting where about half of the workers who became unemployed in the period from November 2005 to March 2006 were...

This paper studies how changes in the two key parameters of unemployment insurance - the benefit replacement rate (RR) and the potential duration of benefits (PBD) - affect the duration of unemployment.In 1989, the Austrian government made unemployment insurance more generous by changing,...

This paper analyzes the design of optimal unemployment insurance in a search equilibrium framework where search effort among the unemployed is not perfectly observable.We examine to what extent the optimal policy involves monitoring of search effort and benefit sanctions if observed search is...

This paper explores the optimal interaction between the tax system and unemployment compensation in insuring people against the risks of involuntary unemployment and low ability.To that end, we introduce search unemployment in a model of optimal non-linear income taxation.We find that the...

The development of the unemployment rate di¤ers substantially between OECD countries.In this paper we investigate to what extent these differences are related to labor market institutions.In our analysis we use data of eighteen OECD countries over the period 1960-1994 and show that the way in...

The development of the unemployment rate differs substantially between OECD countries. In recent years some countries experienced a mild increase, other countries had a stable unemployment rate, while there are also 'successful' countries in which the unemployment rate decreased a lot. A common...