Unemployment insurance and job protection regulations provide assistance to those who face unemployment. Unemployment insurance seems more desirable, since it does not harm flexibility in the labour markets, but it entails a moral hazard risk. Making the unemployment insurance voluntary and...

In this paper we treat an individual's health as a continuous variable, in contrast to the traditional literature on income insurance, where it is regularly treated as a binary variable. This is not a minor technical matter; in fact, a continuous treatment of an individual's health sheds new...

Does the average level of sickness absence in a neighborhood affect individual sickness absence through social interaction on the neighborhood level? To answer this question, we consider evidence of local benefit-dependency cultures. Well-known methodological problems in this type of analysis...

In this paper we treat an individual's health as a continuous variable, in contrast to the traditional literature on income insurance, where it is regularly treated as a binary variable. This is not a minor technical matter; in fact, a continuous treatment of an individual's health sheds new...

In many countries, sickness absence financed by generous insurance benefits has become an important concern in the policy debate. It turns out that there are strong variations in absence behavior between local geographical areas, and it has been difficult to explain these variations by...

In many countries, sickness absence financed by generous insurance benefits is an important concern in the policy debate. There are strong variations in absence behavior among local geographical areas. Such variations are difficult to explain in terms of observable socioeconomic factors. In this...

Social protection systems play a key stabilising role for individuals and societies, especially in the recent context of heightened uncertainties. Income stabilisation and related social policy objectives hinge on the extent to which social protection is accessible for those requiring support....

The Finnish basic income experiment was an ambitious effort to study basic income in a Nordic welfare state. This paper describes the planning, implementation and scientific evaluation of the experiment. The randomized treatment group was paid a guaranteed monthly income, which had no impact on...

This paper analyses a model of private unemployment insurance under limited commitment and a model of public unemployment insurance subject to moral hazard in an economy with a continuum of agents and an infinite time horizon. The dynamic and steady-state properties of the optimum private...