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Extended Unemployment Benefits and Early Retirement: Program Complementarity and Program Substitution

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  • Lukas Inderbitzin

    () (Swiss Institute for Empirical Economic Research, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland)

  • Stefan Staubli
  • Josef Zweimüller

Abstract

This paper explores how extended unemployment insurance (UI) benefits targeted to older workers affect early retirement and social welfare. The trade-off of optimal UI between consumption smoothing and moral hazard requires accounting for the entire early retirement system, which often includes extended UI and relaxed access to disability insurance (DI). We argue that extended UI generates program complementarity (increased take-up of UI followed by DI and/or regular retirement benefits) and program substitution (increased take-up of UI instead of DI). Exploiting Austria’s regional extended benefit program, which extended regular UI benefits to up to 4 years, we find: (i) program complementarity is quantitatively important for workers aged 50+; and (ii) program substitution is quantitatively relevant for workers aged 55+. We derive a simple rule for optimal UI that accounts for program complementarity and program substitution. Using the sufficient statistics approach, we conclude that UI for older workers was too generous and the regional extended benefit program was a suboptimal policy.

Suggested Citation

  • Lukas Inderbitzin & Stefan Staubli & Josef Zweimüller, 2013. "Extended Unemployment Benefits and Early Retirement: Program Complementarity and Program Substitution," Economics working papers 2013-06, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    • Handle: RePEc:jku:econwp:2013_06
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Jesse Rothstein & Robert G. Valletta, 2017. "Scraping by: Income and Program Participation After the Loss of Extended Unemployment Benefits," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 36(4), pages 880-908, September.
    2. Lawson, Nicholas, 2015. "Social program substitution and optimal policy," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 13-27.
    3. Ardito, Chiara, 2017. "Rising Pension Age in Italy: Employment Response and Program Substitution," Department of Economics and Statistics Cognetti de Martiis. Working Papers 201722, University of Turin.
    4. Pauline Leung & Christopher O'Leary, 2015. "Should UI Eligibility Be Expanded to Low-Earning Workers? Evidence on Employment, Transfer Receipt, and Income from Administrative Data," Working Papers 591, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    5. Josef Zweimüller, 2018. "Unemployment insurance and the labor market," ECON - Working Papers 276, Department of Economics - University of Zurich.
    6. repec:wfo:wstudy:58532 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Dayanand S. Manoli & Andrea Weber, 2016. "The Effects of the Early Retirement Age on Retirement Decisions," NBER Working Papers 22561, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Rafael Lalive & Camille Landais & Josef Zweimüller, 2015. "Market Externalities of Large Unemployment Insurance Extension Programs," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(12), pages 3564-3596, December.
    9. Kyyrä, Tomi & Pesola, Hanna, 2017. "Long-term effects of extended unemployment benefits for older workers," Working Papers 89, VATT Institute for Economic Research.
    10. Engels, Barbara & Geyer, Johannes & Haan, Peter, 2017. "Pension incentives and early retirement," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 216-231.
    11. Johannes Geyer & Clara Welteke, 2017. "Closing Routes to Retirement: How Do People Respond?," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1653, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    12. Vestad, Ola Lotherington, 2013. "Labour supply effects of early retirement provision," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 98-109.
    13. Cristiano Antonelli, 2017. "The Engines of the Creative Response: Reactivity and Knowledge Governance," Economía: teoría y práctica, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, México, vol. 47(2), pages 9-30, Julio-Dic.
    14. Arash Nekoei & Andrea Weber, 2017. "Does Extending Unemployment Benefits Improve Job Quality?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(2), pages 527-561, February.
    15. Anne Sonnet & Hilde Olsen & Thomas Manfredi, 2014. "Towards More Inclusive Ageing and Employment Policies: The Lessons from France, The Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland," De Economist, Springer, vol. 162(4), pages 315-339, December.
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    18. Songül Tolan, 2017. "The Effect of Partial Retirement on Labor Supply, Public Balances and the Income Distribution: Evidence from a Structural Analysis," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1679, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    19. Staubli, Stefan & Zweimüller, Josef, 2013. "Does raising the early retirement age increase employment of older workers?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 17-32.
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Early retirement; unemployment; disability; policy reform; optimal benefits;

    JEL classification:

    • J14 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of the Elderly; Economics of the Handicapped; Non-Labor Market Discrimination
    • J26 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Retirement; Retirement Policies
    • J65 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment Insurance; Severance Pay; Plant Closings

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