IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/
MyIDEAS: Log in (now much improved!) to save this article

The effect of unemployment benefits on re-employment rates: Evidence from the Finnish unemployment insurance reform

Author Info

Listed author(s):
  • Uusitalo, Roope
  • Verho, Jouko

Abstract

In January 2003, the unemployment benefits in Finland were increased for workers with long employment histories. The average benefit increase was 15% for the first 150Â days of the unemployment spell. At the same time severance pay system was abolished. In this paper we evaluate the effect of the change in the benefit structure on the duration of unemployment by comparing the changes in the re-employment hazard profiles among the unemployed who were affected by the reform to the changes in a comparison group whose benefit structure remained unchanged. We find that the change in the benefit structure reduced the re-employment hazards by on average 17%. The effect is largest at the beginning of the unemployment spell and disappears after the eligibility period for the increased benefits expires.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927-5371(10)00012-6
Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.

Article provided by Elsevier in its journal Labour Economics.

Volume (Year): 17 (2010)
Issue (Month): 4 (August)
Pages: 643-654

as
in new window

Handle: RePEc:eee:labeco:v:17:y:2010:i:4:p:643-654
Contact details of provider: Web page: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/labeco

Keywords: Unemployment insurance Duration models;

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

as
in new window


  1. Richard K. Crump & V. Joseph Hotz & Guido W. Imbens & Oscar A. Mitnik, 2009. "Dealing with limited overlap in estimation of average treatment effects," Biometrika, Biometrika Trust, vol. 96(1), pages 187-199.
  2. Rafael Lalive & Jan Van Ours & Josef Zweimuller, 2006. "How Changes in Financial Incentives Affect the Duration of Unemployment," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 73(4), pages 1009-1038.
  3. Carling, Kenneth & Holmlund, Bertil & Vejsiu, Altin, 2001. "Do Benefit Cuts Boost Job Finding? Swedish Evidence from the 1990s," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 111(474), pages 766-790, October.
  4. Meyer, Bruce D, 1990. "Unemployment Insurance and Unemployment Spells," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(4), pages 757-782, July.
  5. Tomi Kyyrä & Ralf A. Wilke, 2007. "Reduction in the Long-Term Unemployment of the Elderly: A Success Story from Finland," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 5(1), pages 154-182, 03.
  6. Lalive, Rafael & Zweimuller, Josef, 2004. "Benefit entitlement and unemployment duration: The role of policy endogeneity," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(12), pages 2587-2616, December.
  7. Roed, Knut & Zhang, Tao, 2005. "Unemployment duration and economic incentives--a quasi random-assignment approach," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 49(7), pages 1799-1825, October.
  8. Helge Bennmarker & Kenneth Carling & Bertil Holmlund, 2007. "Do Benefit Hikes Damage Job Finding? Evidence from Swedish Unemployment Insurance Reforms," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 21(1), pages 85-120, 03.
  9. Raj Chetty, 2008. "Moral Hazard versus Liquidity and Optimal Unemployment Insurance," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 116(2), pages 173-234, 04.
  10. Hunt, Jennifer, 1995. "The Effect of Unemployment Compensation on Unemployment Duration in Germany," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 13(1), pages 88-120, January.
  11. Card, David & Levine, Phillip B., 2000. "Extended benefits and the duration of UI spells: evidence from the New Jersey extended benefit program," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(1-2), pages 107-138, October.
  12. Guido W. Imbens & Jeffrey M. Wooldridge, 2009. "Recent Developments in the Econometrics of Program Evaluation," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(1), pages 5-86, March.
  13. Krueger, Alan B. & Meyer, Bruce D., 2002. "Labor supply effects of social insurance," Handbook of Public Economics,in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 33, pages 2327-2392 Elsevier.
  14. Raj Chetty, 2008. "Moral Hazard versus Liquidity and Optimal Unemployment Insurance," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 116(2), pages 173-234, 04.
  15. Knut Roed & Tao Zhang, 2003. "Does Unemployment Compensation Affect Unemployment Duration?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(484), pages 190-206, January.
  16. Hakola, Tuulia & Uusitalo, Roope, 2005. "Not so voluntary retirement decisions? Evidence from a pension reform," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(11-12), pages 2121-2136, December.
  17. Uusitalo, Roope & Verho, Jouko, 2007. "The effect of unemployment benefits on re-employment rates: evidence from the Finnish UI-benefit reform," Working Paper Series 2007:21, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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

as
in new window


Cited by:

  1. Yolanda F. Rebollo-Sanz & Nuria Rodriguez Planas, 2016. "When the Going Gets Tough... Financial Incentives, Duration of Unemployment and Job-Match Quality," Working Papers 16.11, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Department of Economics.
  2. Konstantinos Tatsiramos & Jan C. Ours, 2014. "Labor Market Effects Of Unemployment Insurance Design," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(2), pages 284-311, 04.
  3. Simoes, Nadia, 2013. "Subsídio de desemprego: uma revisão da literatura teórica e empírica
    [Unemployment insurance: a survey]    ," MPRA Paper 52332, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  4. Ioana C. Salagean & Nicholas T. Longford, 2013. "The effect of unemployment benefits on labour market behaviour in Luxembourg," Statistics in Transition new series, Główny Urząd Statystyczny (Polska), vol. 14(2), pages 249-272, June.
  5. Florent Fremigacci, 2010. "Maximum Benefits Duration and Older Workers’Transitions out of Unemployment : a Regression Discontinuity Approach," Documents de recherche 10-12, Centre d'Études des Politiques Économiques (EPEE), Université d'Evry Val d'Essonne.
  6. Aida Caldera Sánchez & Alain de Serres & Naomitsu Yashiro, 2016. "Reforming in a difficult macroeconomic context: A review of the issues and recent literature," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 1297, OECD Publishing.
  7. Le Barbanchon, Thomas, 2016. "The effect of the potential duration of unemployment benefits on unemployment exits to work and match quality in France," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 16-29.
  8. Martin Gonzalez-Rozada & Hernan Ruffo, 2014. "The Effects of Unemployment Insurance Under High Informality: Evidence from Argentina," Department of Economics Working Papers wp201403, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella.
  9. Kyyrä, Tomi & Pesola, Hanna, 2017. "The Effects of UI Benefits on Unemployment and Subsequent Outcomes: Evidence from a Kinked Benefit Rule," IZA Discussion Papers 10484, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Access and download statistics

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:labeco:v:17:y:2010:i:4:p:643-654. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Dana Niculescu)

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.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

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

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using RePEc data.