This paper analyses the impact of Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) extensions on jobseeker households in selected US states and examines how these extensions compare to the pre-pandemic policies. The analysis finds that PUA extensions increase benefit duration for all jobseekers, but due...

This paper analyzes the effectiveness of social protection systems in Europe and the US to provide (income) insurance against macro level shocks in terms of automatic stabilizers. We find that automatic stabilizers absorb 38% of a proportional income shock and 47% of an idiosyncratic...

This testimony makes three main points. First, income volatility, especially when it involves income declines, imposes significant hardships on American families. It heightens stress about finances and may increase household living expenses. These hardships are most pronounced for middle-and...

In this paper, U.S. data on labor market histories of displaced workers are used to quantify the effect of Unemployment Insurance Compensation (UIC) on both unemployment and employment durations. This results in the first available assessment of the effect that UIC has on the fraction of time...

Wage insurance is a program that attempts to help permanently displaced workers transition to employment rapidly, effectively, and equitably. Because displaced workers have been found to suffer substantial earnings losses when they become reemployed, a wage insurance program provides a temporary...

Recent efforts to expand unemployment insurance (UI) eligibility are expected to increase low-earning workers' access to UI. Although the expansion's aim is to smooth the income and consumption of previously ineligible workers, it is possible that UI benefits simply displace other sources of...

We exploit a policy discontinuity at U.S. state borders to identify the effects of unemployment insurance policies on unemployment. Our estimates imply that most of the persistent increase in unemployment during the Great Recession can be accounted for by the unprecedented extensions of...

Using newly digitized unemployment insurance claims data we construct a historical monthly unemployment series for U.S. states going back to January 1947. The constructed series are highly correlated with the Bureau of Labor Statics' state-level unemployment data, which are only available from...

During the recent recession only 17 states offered short-time compensation (STC) - pro-rated unemployment benefits for workers whose hours are reduced for economic reasons. New federal legislation will encourage the expansion of STC. Exploiting cross-state variation in STC, we present new...

We study the effect of unemployment on child maltreatment in the United States for the period 2004-12, at the county level. We use a new administrative dataset containing every report of child abuse and neglect made to the Child Protective Services, and identify the effect using a Bartik...