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Labor Market Responses to Unemployment Insurance: The Role of Heterogeneity

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Abstract

We document considerable scope of heterogeneity within the unemployed, especially when the unemployed are divided along eligibility and receipt of unemployment insurance (UI). We study the implications of this heterogeneity on UI’s insurance-incentive trade-off using a heterogeneous-agent job-search model capable of matching the wealth and income differences that distinguish UI recipients from non-recipients. Insurance benefits are larger for UI recipients who are predominantly wealth-poor. Meanwhile, incentive costs are nonmonotonic in wealth because the poorest individuals, who value employment, exhibit weak responses. Differential elasticities imply that accounting for the composition of recipients is material to aligning model predictions with empirical estimates.

Suggested Citation

  • Serdar Birinci & Kurt See, 2019. "Labor Market Responses to Unemployment Insurance: The Role of Heterogeneity," Working Papers 2019-022, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, revised Nov 2021.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedlwp:87403
    DOI: 10.20955/wp.2019.022
    Note: Publisher DOI: https://doi.org/10.1257/mac.20200057
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    Cited by:

    1. Birinci, Serdar & Karahan, Fatih & Mercan, Yusuf & See, Kurt, 2021. "Labor market policies during an epidemic," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 194(C).
    2. J. Carter Braxton & Gordon Phillips & Kyle Herkenhoff, 2018. "Can the Unemployed Borrow? Implications for Public Insurance," 2018 Meeting Papers 564, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    3. 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.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Unemployment Insurance; Fiscal Policy and Household Behavior; Job Search;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search
    • J65 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment Insurance; Severance Pay; Plant Closings

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