Job duration and history dependent unemployment insurance

Unemployment insurance schemes typically include eligibility conditions depending on the employment history of the unemployed. The literature on the design of unemployment insurance schemes has largely ignored this aspect, perhaps due to the implied history dependence and heterogeneity across otherwise identical workers. We develop an analytically tractable matching model permitting an analysis of the consequences of such history dependencies. Unemployed determine reservation durations to the jobs they find acceptable, and the stronger employment histories lead to higher reservation durations. Consequently, short-term jobs are only acceptable to unemployed with a weak employment history, while unemployed with a stronger employment history have higher reservation durations. This affects the equilibrium distribution of employment according to job durations; fewer short duration jobs are filled, but this also means that fewer are locked-into such jobs, and therefore more jobs with long durations are filled, although the net effect generally is to lower employment. Employment history contingencies this affect both the level and structure of employment. Equilibrium (un)employment depends not only on reservation durations, and a longer benefit duration combined with a decrease in the benefit level to retain reservation durations has a negative effect on employment.