Since the probability of finding a job is affected not only by individual effort but also by the aggregate state of the economy, designing unemployment insurance payments conditional on the business cycle could be valuable. This paper answers a fundamental question related to this issue: How...

A series of empirical studies has documented that job search behavior depends on the financial situation of the unemployed. Starting from this observation, we ask how unemployment insurance policy should take the individual financial situation into account. We use a quantitative model with a...

We examine how unemployment schemes and liquidity constraints affect re-employment probabilities and unemployment duration. In particular we investigate to which extent those schemes, through employment services and search requirements, can offset the expected perverse effect of benefits on...

In this paper, I examine the impact of immigrants on the social security system in Germany when return migration is an endogenous choice. For this purpose, I develop a dynamic stochastic model of joint return migration and saving decisions that accounts for uncertainty in future employment and...

I develop an equilibrium matching model in which workers have preferences over consumption and hours of work and are able to self-insure against unemployment risks by accumulating precautionary wealth. Wages and working hours are the outcomes of Nash bargaining between workers and firms. I focus...

This paper studies the design of unemployment insurance when neither the searching effort nor the savings of an unemployed agent can be monitored. If the principal could monitor the savings, the optimal policy would leave the agent savings-constrained. With a constant absolute risk-aversion...

Monitoring the job-search activities of unemployed workers is a common government intervention. Typically, a caseworker reviews the unemployed worker's employment contacts at some frequency, and applies sanctions if certain requirements are not met. I model monitoring in the optimal unemployment...

This report examines the impact on Employment Insurance (EI) eligibility of the increase in the entrance requirement for new entrants and re-entrants, under Bill C-12, from 20 to 26 weeks (or equivalent 910 hours). The results of the analysis suggest that: a) On average, about 36,500 new...

Unemployment Accounts (UA) are mandatory individual saving accounts that can be used by governments as an alternative to the Unemployment Insurance (UI) system. I study a two tier UA-UI system where the unemployed withdraw from their unemployment account until it is exhausted and then receive...

A vast theoretical and empirical literature has focused on the effects of unemployment insurance benefits on the decisions of the recipients and how these decisions influence their labor market outcomes. Three strands of literature are discussed in this paper: (i) the impact of unemployment...