An article by Francesco Daveri and Guido Tabellini (2000) combines empirics and a general-equilibrium overlapping-generations model to recommend the reduction of labor taxation and pension expenditures. I demonstrate that, in the model, unemployment would be zero if unemployment benefits...

In this paper we present and estimate a synthesis of previous equilibrium search models: allowing for continuous distributions of workers opportunity costs of employment, as well as firms’ productivities. The model allows for on-the-job search, and we assume that job offer arrival rates for...

The consequences of business cycle contingencies in unemployment insurance systems are considered in a search-matching model allowing for shifts between "good" and "bad" states of nature. We show that not only is there an insurance argument for such contingencies, but also an incentive argument....

In reforming unemployment benefit systems, the policy debate should be on the appropriate level of benefits, the subsidies needed for people who cannot contribute enough, and how to finance the subsidies, rather than on whether unemployment insurance or individual unemployment savings accounts...

High unemployment and its social and economic consequences have lent urgency to the question of how to improve unemployment insurance in bad times without jeopardizing incentives to work or public finances in the medium term. A possible solution is a rule-based system that improves the...

After steady employment growth since the 1990s, Spain has experienced the sharpest increase in unemployment among OECD countries during the crisis, amplified by structural problems of the labour market. Very high de facto severance payment of permanent contracts has resulted in a rigid dual...

In this paper we present and estimate a synthesis of previous equilibrium search models: allowing for continuous distributions of workers opportunity costs of employment, as well as firms' productivities. The model allows for on-the-job search, and we assume that job offer arrival rates for...

Social welfare systems usually imply specific obligations for benefit recipients. If a recipient does not comply with these obligations, a sanction involving a punitive benefits reduction may be imposed. In this paper we give an overview of the literature on the effects of sanctions in social...

This paper uses a unique dataset about unemployment benefit recipients and their exits to employment in Estonia to investigate the effects of benefits on unemployment duration. Both nonparametric and parametric estimations show that unemployment benefits have a strong and significant...

We estimate the effect of a shortening of unemployment benefit entitlements on unemployment duration. Previous studies on the same or related problems have not taken into account that the competing risks duration model is not identified and we shed first light on the question whether the non...