Many studies have found that the exit rate from unemployment increases in the vicinity of the exhaustion day of unemployment insurance benefits. The extent to which this "spike" is driven by job search behavior is important for assessing the distortionary effect of unemployment insurance. Card,...

This paper examines the long-term effects of extended unemployment benefits that older unemployed can collect until retirement in Finland. We consider a reform that increased the age threshold of this scheme from 55 to 57 for people born in 1950 or later. Our regression discontinuity estimates...

We present a sharp test for the efficiency of job separations. First, we document a dramatic increase in the separation rate - 11.2ppt (28%) over five years - in response to a quasi-experimental extension of UI benefit duration for older workers. Second, after the abolition of the policy, the...

In talent-intensive jobs, workers' quality is revealed by their performance. This enhances productivity and earnings, but also increases layoff risk. Firms cannot insure workers against this risk if they compete fiercely for talent. In this case, the more risk-averse workers will choose less...

Employer-provided severance pay in the U.S. emerged among salaried workers during the Great Depression as an alternative to modest advance notice and expanded in the late 1950s and 1960s, especially among union (hourly) workers. A variety of sources are employed to estimate variations in...

Employer-provided severance pay plans became common during the Great Depression, a reaction to (i) large-scale layoffs of long-service workers, and (ii) the growing formalism of the employment relationship. Reasonably consistent series are constructed for severance plan coverage and structure by...

We present a sharp test for the efficiency of job separations. First, we document a dramatic increase in the separation rate - 11.2ppt (28%) over five years - in response to a quasi-experimental extension of UI benefit duration for older workers. Second, after the abolition of the policy, the...

We study the effects of parental job loss on children and how access to unemployment benefits can mitigate these impacts. We leverage unique nationwide data from Brazil linking multiple administrative datasets, and take a comprehensive approach studying impacts on education as well as other key...

We examine the impact of local labor market shocks and state unemployment insurance (UI) policies on student discipline in U.S. public schools. Analyzing school-level discipline data and firm-level layoffs in 23 states, we find that layoffs have little effect on discipline rates overall....

We study the effects of job loss and unemployment insurance (UI) on health among Brazilian workers. We construct a novel dataset linking individual-level administrative records on employment, hospital discharges, and mortality for a 17-year period, rarely available in the context of developing...