This study examines the determinants of job-finding rates of unemployment benefit recipients under the Chilean program. This is a unique, innovative program that combines social insurance through a solidarity fund (SF) with self-insurance in the form of unemployment insurance savings accounts...

Unemployment rates are often higher for migrants than for natives. This could result from longer periods of unemployment as well as from shorter periods of employment. This paper jointly examines male native-migrant differences in the duration of unemployment and subsequent employment using...

This Paper studies the wage effects of the use of alcohol and tobacco. The analysis based on a recent survey in the Netherlands shows that for males the use of tobacco has a negative wage effect of about 10% while the use of alcohol has a positive wage effect of about the same size. Smoking and...

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,...

The potential duration of benefits is generally viewed as an important determinant of unemployment duration. This Paper evaluates a unique policy change that prolonged entitlement to regular unemployment benefits from 30 weeks to a maximum of 209 weeks for elderly individuals in certain regions...

This paper applies semiparametric regression models to shed light on the relation-ship between body weight and labor market outcomes in Germany. We find conclusive evidence that these relationships are poorly described by linear or quadratic OLS specifications, which have been the main...

Background: This study investigates possible mechanisms that can explain the association between unemployment and smoking, that is a) unemployment increases smoking probability (causation), b) smoking increases the probability to become unemployed (selection), and c) differences in both smoking...