The analysis provides a new explanation for two widespread problems concerning European unemployment policy: the disappointingly small effect of many past reform measures on unemployment, and the political difficulties in implementing more extensive reform programs. We argue that the heart of...

We extend the benchmark model of Aghion and Blanchard (1994), assuming two segments of the emerging private sector that differ in workers' productivity. We look at the paths of employment, wages, taxes, labor costs and profits during and after the transition, up until the shock is fully...

In a growing number of countries, the delivery of social welfare services is contracted out to private providers, and increasingly, using performance-based contracts. Critics of performance-based incentive contracts stress their potential unintended effects, including cream-skimming and other...

Although many programs redistribute resources in the U.S., two program were central in providing a safety net for those facing hardship during the Great Recession: the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which grew to 47.7 million people in January 2013 - or 15.1 percent of all...

This is the first study to evaluate the effects of early pension withdrawal policies on tenures on unemployment payments in the COVID-19 context. We use a novel set of linked whole-of-population administrative records to examine more than half-a-million Australians who found themselves newly on...

We document the effect of unemployment insurance generosity on divorce and fertility using an identification strategy that leverages state-level changes in maximum benefits over time and comparisons across workers who have been laid off and those that have not been laid off. The results indicate...

This paper investigates how the potential duration of unemployment benefits affects the quality of post-unemployment jobs. It takes advantage of a natural experiment introduced by a change in Slovenia's unemployment insurance law that substantially reduced the potential benefit duration....

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...

We study how changes in the maximum benefit duration affect the inflow into unemployment in the Netherlands. Until August 2003, workers who became unemployed after age 57.5 were entitled to unemployment benefits until the age of 65, after which they would receive old age pensions. This...

We model how unemployment benefit sanctions - benefit reductions that are imposed if unemployed do not comply with job search guidelines - affect unemployment. In our analysis we find that not only micro effects concerning the behavior of individual unemployed workers are relevant, but also...