Adverse Selection and Moral Hazard: Quantitative Implications for Unemployment Insurance

I construct a dynamic contracting model of optimal unemployment insurance with adverse selection and moral hazard that captures the transition from unemployment to non-participation observed in the data, which the standard moral hazard model fails to capture. My model generates both qualitative and quantitative implications for the optimal provision of unemployment insurance. Qualitatively, for some agents, incentives in the optimal contract imply consumption increases over the duration of non-employment. Quantitatively, I compare the current U.S. system to the optimal one, and find large cost savings to adopting the optimal contract. The optimal contract achieves an additional 46% of cost savings relative to a planner who ignores adverse selection and focuses only on moral hazard. I also find the current transition from unemployment to non-participation to be efficient, and when compared to the current U.S. system, the optimal contract implies agents experiencing a long spell of non-participation have consumption increasing over the spell.