Expanding unemployment insurance (UI) not only reduces the burden for the unemployed but also the moral cost of layoffs to firms and their managers. Using staggered expansions of UI across US states, we show that expanding UI leads to larger layoffs in firms experiencing negative economic...

How should unemployment benefits vary in response to the economic crisis induced by the COVID-19 pandemic? We answer this question by computing the optimal unemployment insurance response to the COVID-induced recession.We compare the optimal policy to the provisions under the CARES Act—which...

We provide new evidence on the effect of the unemployment insurance (UI) weekly benefit amount on unemployment insurance spells based on administrative data from the state of Missouri covering the period 2003-2013. Identification comes from a regression kink design that exploits the...

We examine how a 16-week cut in potential unemployment insurance (UI) duration in Missouri affected search behavior of UI recipients and the aggregate labor market. Using a regression discontinuity design (RDD), we estimate a marginal effect of maximum duration on UI and nonemployment spells of...

For every payment, there is an equal and opposite tax. In the study of unemployment insurance, economists have developed a substantial literature considering the impact of payments on labor supply. In contrast, they have usually left unexamined the influence on labor demand of the unique tax...

This paper reviews the Farber, Rothstein and Valletta (2015)'s study on the relationship between Unemployment Insurance (UI) Benefit and Unemployment Reduction in the United States. Following their research, this paper considers the individual's decision on labour supply based on Neoclassical...

Unemployment insurance (UI) policies are implemented by many countries to lower individual income risk and to automatically stabilize macroeconomic fluctuations. To the extent that these policies are successful, however, they should be reducing precautionary savings and hence bank deposits –...

In 2013, the state of North Carolina reformed its state Unemployment Insurance (UI) program by reducing the maximum number of payment weeks and reducing the maximum weekly insurance payment. This paper investigates two hypotheses associated with such reform. The first hypothesis is a...

This article analyzes the behavioral effects of unemployment benefits (UB) and it characterizes their optimal level when jobless people, who can carry out a subsistence activity, only survive if they have access to a minimum consumption level. Our model shows that if the level of UB is low...

We document two potential biases in recent analyses of UI benefit extensions using boundary-based identification: from using county-level aggregates and from across-border policy spillovers. To examine the first bias, we use a regression discontinuity (RD) approach that accounts for measurement...