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On households and unemployment insurance

Author

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  • Sekyu Choi
  • Arnau Valladares‐Esteban

Abstract

We study unemployment insurance in a framework where the main source of heterogeneity among agents is the type of household they live in: some agents live alone while others live with their spouses as a family. Our exercise is motivated by the fact that married individuals can rely on spousal income to smooth labor market shocks, while singles cannot. We extend a version of the standard incomplete‐markets model to include two‐agent households and calibrate it to the US economy with special emphasis on matching differences in labor market transitions across gender and marital status as well as aggregate wealth moments. Our central finding is that changes to the current unemployment insurance program are valued differently by married and single households. In particular, a more generous unemployment insurance reduces the welfare of married households significantly more than that of singles and vice versa. We show that this result is driven by the amount of self‐insurance existing in married households, and thus, we highlight the interplay between self‐ and government‐provided insurance and its implication for policy.

Suggested Citation

  • Sekyu Choi & Arnau Valladares‐Esteban, 2020. "On households and unemployment insurance," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 11(1), pages 437-469, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:quante:v:11:y:2020:i:1:p:437-469
    DOI: 10.3982/QE865
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    Cited by:

    1. Fernández-Blanco, Javier, 2022. "Unemployment risks and intra-household insurance," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).
    2. Bredemeier, Christian & Ndlovu, Patrick & Vujic, Suncica & Winkler, Roland, 2024. "Household Decisions and the Gender Gap in Job Satisfaction," IZA Discussion Papers 16760, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Per Krusell & Toshihiko Mukoyama & Richard Rogerson & Ayşegül Şahin, 2017. "Gross Worker Flows over the Business Cycle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(11), pages 3447-3476, November.
    4. Nezih Guner & Yuliya Kulikova & Arnau Valladares-Esteban, 2020. "Does the Added Worker Effect Matter?," Working Papers wp2020_2001, CEMFI.
    5. Elena Capatina & Hyunjae Kang, 2024. "Demand for Spousal Health," ANU Working Papers in Economics and Econometrics 2023-695, Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics.
    6. Kathrin Ellieroth, 2019. "Spousal Insurance, Precautionary Labor Supply, and the Business Cycle - A Quantitative Analysis," 2019 Meeting Papers 1134, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    7. Serdar Birinci, 2019. "Spousal Labor Supply Response to Job Displacement and Implications for Optimal Transfers," Working Papers 2019-020, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, revised 25 Sep 2021.
    8. Javier López Segovia, 2023. "Consumption Commitments and Unemployment Insurance," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2023_458, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
    9. Bram De Rock & Mariia Kovaleva & Tom Potoms, 2023. "A Spouse and a House are all we need? Housing Demand, Labor Supply and Divorce over the Lifecycle," Working Papers ECARES 2023-18, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.

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