Distributions of tax rates on job acceptance and layoff margins are estimated for unemployed household heads and spouses under three benefit and tax rule scenarios: actual rules under the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, rules as they would have been if they had not been changed since...

A political miracle occurred when Germany was reunited, and at first glance an economic miracle has followed. Real incomes in the east have now reached the western level, and investment per capita has been much higher than in the west. However, every third deutschmark spent in the east has been...

We study the consequences of product and labor market reforms in a two-country model with endogenous producer entry and labor market frictions. We focus on the role of business cycle conditions and external constraints at the time of reform implementation (or of a credible commitment to it) in...

How big are the welfare losses from severe economic downturns, such as the U.S. Great Recession? How are those losses distributed across the population? In this paper we answer these questions using a canonical business cycle model featuring household income and wealth heterogeneity that matches...

Using data spanning a half century for adjacent jurisdictions in the U.S. and Canada, we study the long-term effects of a very generous unemployment insurance (UI)program on weeks worked. We find large effects. For example, in 1990, about 6 percent of employed men in Maine's northernmost...

The declining economic position over the past two decades of those workers with less skill increases the importance of the unemployment insurance (UI) system in providing a safety net during periods of unemployment. Recent welfare reform legislation, designed to encourage labor market entry of...

Reemployment bonus experiments offer large lump sum payments to unemployment insurance (UI) recipients who find a job quickly. Such experiments are underway or have been recently completed in four states. This paper analyzes the results from Illinois and discusses the implications of the...

We consider nonparametric identification and estimation in a nonseparable model where a continuous regressor of interest is a known, deterministic, but kinked function of an observed assignment variable. This design arises in many institutional settings where a policy variable (such as weekly...

In response to the Great Recession, the availability of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits was extended to an unprecedented 99 weeks in many U.S. states in the 2009-2012 period. We use matched monthly data from the CPS to exploit variation in the timing and size of the UI benefit extensions...