Recent empirical evidence has found that employment services and small-businessassistance programmes are often successful at getting the unemployed back to work. Oneimportant concern of policy makers is to decide which of these two programmes is moreeffective and for whom...

This paper studies optimal unemployment benefit levels and optimal proportional income taxrates over the business cycle. Previous research suggests that policy makers should makeunemployment insurance (UI) dependent on the business cycle because the UI system canbe used to smooth consumption...

A significant fraction of the labor force consists of employed workers who are part-timeunemployed (underemployed) in the sense that they are unable to work as much as theyprefer. This paper develops a search and matching model to study the design of optimalunemployment insurance in an economy...

This study examines the determinants of job-finding rates of unemployment benefit recipientsunder the Chilean program. This is a unique, innovative program that combines socialinsurance through a solidarity fund (SF) with self-insurance in the form of unemploymentinsurance savings accounts...

In 2001-02, Argentina experienced a wrenching economic crisis. Plan Jefes, implemented in May 2002, was Argentina´s institutional response to the increase in unemployment and poverty triggered by the crisis. The program provided a social safety net and appears to have successfully protected...

We examine the relationship between unemployment benefits and unemployment using Swedish regional data. To estimate the effect of an increase in unemployment insurance (UI) on unemployment we exploit the ceiling on UI benefits. The benefit ceiling, coupled with the fact that there are regional...

This paper provides new evidence on time use and subjective well-being of employed and unemployed individuals in 14 countries. We devote particular attention to characterizing and modeling job search intensity, measured by the amount of time devoted to searching for a new job[...]

This paper exploits survey information on reservation wages and data on actual wages from the European Community Household Panel to deduce in the manner of Lancaster and Chesher (1983) additional parameters of a stylized structural search model; specifically, reservation wage and...

This paper provides evidence about the effects of dismissals-for-cause requirements, aspecific component of employment protection legislation that has received little attentiondespite its potential relevance. We study a quasi-natural experiment generated by a lawintroduced in Portugal in 1989:...

We analyse the effect of skill mismatch in a search model of equilibrium unemployment with risk-neutral agents, endogenous job destruction, and two-sidedex-ante heterogeneity. First, we examine the interaction of labour market institutions and skill mismatch. We find that skill mismatch changes...