IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/macdyn/v20y2016i05p1174-1195_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Effects Of Extended Unemployment Insurance Benefits On Labor Dynamics

Author

Listed:
  • Faig, Miquel
  • Zhang, Min
  • Zhang, Shiny

Abstract

We calculate that the extension of unemployment insurance benefits during downturns has significantly increased the variability of unemployment and vacancies in the United States. Taking this into account reduces the value of leisure necessary to match the wide labor market business cycles experienced in the United States using the Mortensen--Pissarides model. For this calculation, we analyze a version of the model where unemployment insurance benefits not only expire but must be earned with prior employment. With these features, we can calibrate the model to be consistent with unemployment responding strongly to productivity shocks and mildly to changes in unemployment insurance policies. Our preferred calibration predicts that the standard deviation of unemployment since 1945 would have fallen by around 37% if there had not been programs extending unemployment benefits during recessions. We also find that the enactment of the Emergency Unemployment Compensation program in 2008 increased the unemployment rate by 0.5 percentage points.

Suggested Citation

  • Faig, Miquel & Zhang, Min & Zhang, Shiny, 2016. "Effects Of Extended Unemployment Insurance Benefits On Labor Dynamics," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(5), pages 1174-1195, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:macdyn:v:20:y:2016:i:05:p:1174-1195_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1365100514000789/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rujiwattanapong, W. Similan, 2019. "Unemployment dynamics and endogenous unemployment insurance extensions," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 100948, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:macdyn:v:20:y:2016:i:05:p:1174-1195_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/mdy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.