It is widely believed that the presence of a large informal sector increases the efficiency costs of social programs in developing countries. We develop a simple theoretical model of optimal unemployment insurance (UI) that specifies the efficiency-insurance tradeoff in the presence of informal...

Few developing countries have adopted an Unemployment Insurance (UI) program but the list of countries considering its implementation is growing. Focusing on the Brazilian UI program and using administrative data covering the universe of formal employment, we provide empirical evidence...