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Optimal Unemployment Insurance with Monitoring

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Author Info
Setty, Ofer
Abstract

Monitoring the job-search activities of unemployed workers is a common government intervention. Typically, a caseworker reviews the unemployed worker's employment contacts at some frequency, and applies sanctions if certain requirements are not met. I model monitoring in the optimal unemployment insurance framework of Hopenhayn and Nicolini (1997), where job-search effort is private information for the unemployed worker. In the model, monitoring provides costly information upon which the government conditions the unemployment benefits. In the optimal monitoring scheme, endogenous sanctions and rewards, together with random monitoring, create effective job-search incentives for the unemployed worker. I calibrate the model to the US economy and find that the addition of optimal monitoring to the optimal unemployment insurance scheme decreases the variance of consumption by about two thirds and eliminates roughly half of the government's cost. I also find that compared with the optimal monitoring scheme, US states monitor too much and impose the sanctions over too short a time span. For the US on average, shifting to the optimal monitoring policy would generate savings of about $500 per unemployment spell.

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Paper provided by University Library of Munich, Germany in its series MPRA Paper with number 18188.

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Date of creation: 06 Jan 2009
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Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:18188

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Related research
Keywords: Recursive Contracts; Unemployment Insurance; Job Search Monitoring;

Find related papers by JEL classification:
H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation
J65 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, and Vacancies - - - Unemployment Insurance; Severance Pay; Plant Closings
J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, and Vacancies - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search
D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information

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  1. van den Berg, Gerard J. & van der Klaauw, Bas, 2001. "Counseling and Monitoring of Unemployed Workers: Theory and Evidence from a Controlled Social Experiment," IZA Discussion Papers 374, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). [Downloadable!]
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  2. Boone, Jan & Fredriksson, Peter & Holmlund, Bertil & van Ours, Jan C., 2001. "Optimal Unemployment Insurance with Monitoring and Sanctions," IZA Discussion Papers 401, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). [Downloadable!]
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  3. Jaap H. Abbring & Gerard J. Berg & Jan C. Ours, 2005. "The Effect of Unemployment Insurance Sanctions on the Transition Rate from Unemployment to Employment," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 115(505), pages 602-630, 07. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  4. Gerard J. van den Berg & Bas van der Klaauw & Jan C. van Ours, 2004. "Punitive Sanctions and the Transition Rate from Welfare to Work," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 22(1), pages 211-210, January. [Downloadable!]
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  5. Atila Abdulkadiroglu & Burhanettin Kuruscu & Aysegul Sahin, 2002. "Unemployment insurance and the role of self-insurance," Discussion Papers 0102-27, Columbia University, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
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  6. Hopenhayn, Hugo A & Nicolini, Juan Pablo, 1997. "Optimal Unemployment Insurance," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(2), pages 412-38, April.
    Other versions:
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This page was last updated on 2009-11-29.

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