A key question in labor market research is how the unemployment insurance system affects unemployment rates and labor market dynamics. We revisit this old question studying the German Hartz reforms. On average, lower separation rates explain 76% of declining unemployment after the reform, a fact...

The issue of whether unemployment benefits should increase or decrease over the unemployment spell is analyzed in a tractable model allowing moral hazard, adverse selection and hidden saving. Analytical results show that when the search productivity of unemployed is constant over the...

The search-matching model is well suited for an equilibrium evaluation of labor market policies. When those policies are targeted on some groups, the usual juxtaposition of labor markets is however a shortcoming. There is a need for a setting where workers' productivity depends on employment...

We develop a method to jointly measure the response of worker search effort (individual effect) and vacancy creation (market-level effect) to changes in the duration of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits. To implement this approach, we exploit an unexpected cut in UI durations in Missouri and...

This paper measures the job-search responses to the COVID-19 pandemic using realtime data on vacancy postings and ad views on Sweden's largest online job board. First, the labour demand shock in Sweden is as large as in the US, and affects industries and occupations heterogeneously. Second, the...

We develop a multi-sectoral matching model to predict the impact of the lockdown on the US unemployment, considering the heterogeneity of workers to account for the contrasted impacts across various types of jobs. We show that separations and business closures that hit the workers with the first...

The issue of whether unemployment benefits should increase or decrease over the unemployment spell is analyzed in a tractable model allowing moral hazard, adverse selection and hidden saving. Analytical results show that when the search productivity of unemployed is constant over the...

The search-matching model is well suited for an equilibrium evaluation of labor market policies. When those policies are targeted on some groups, the usual juxtaposition of labor markets is however a shortcoming. There is a need for a setting where workers’ productivity depends on employment...

This paper provides evidence on the behavior of reservation wages over the spell of unemployment using high‐frequency longitudinal data. Using data from our survey of unemployed workers in New Jersey, where workers were interviewed each week for up to 24 weeks, we find that self‐reported...

This paper analyzes the effects of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits on unemployment exits and subsequent labor market outcomes. We exploit a piecewise linear relationship between the previous wage and UI benefits in Finland to identify the causal effects of the benefit level by using a...