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Social Insurance, Information Revelation, and Lack of Commitment

Author

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  • Mikhail Golosov
  • Luigi Iovino

Abstract

We study optimal provision of unemployment insurance in a model where agents privately observe arrival of job opportunities and government’s ability to commit is imperfect. Imperfect commitment implies that full information revelation is generally suboptimal. Social welfare is convex in the probability with which agents reveal their private information. In the optimum, each agent is provided with incentives to either fully reveal his private information or not reveal it at all. The optimal contract can be decentralized by a joint system of unemployment and disability benefits in a way that resembles how these systems are used in practice.

Suggested Citation

  • Mikhail Golosov & Luigi Iovino, 2021. "Social Insurance, Information Revelation, and Lack of Commitment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 129(9), pages 2629-2665.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jpolec:doi:10.1086/715022
    DOI: 10.1086/715022
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Golosov, M. & Tsyvinski, A. & Werquin, N., 2016. "Recursive Contracts and Endogenously Incomplete Markets," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 725-841, Elsevier.
    2. Brendon, C. & Ellison, M., 2018. "Time-Consistently Undominated Policies," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1809, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    3. Craig Brett & John A. Weymark, 2019. "Optimal nonlinear taxation of income and savings without commitment," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 21(1), pages 5-43, February.
    4. Doval, Laura & Skreta, Vasiliki, 2024. "Mechanism design with limited commitment: Markov environments," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 167(C).
    5. Laura Doval & Vasiliki Skreta, 2022. "Mechanism Design With Limited Commitment," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 90(4), pages 1463-1500, July.
    6. Josef Schroth, 2016. "Supervising Financial Regulators," Staff Working Papers 16-52, Bank of Canada.
    7. Josef Schroth, 2015. "Risk Sharing in the Presence of a Public Good," Staff Working Papers 15-27, Bank of Canada.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D86 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Economics of Contract Law
    • E61 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Policy Objectives; Policy Designs and Consistency; Policy Coordination
    • H3 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents

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