IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/upj/weupjo/cjo19954.html

Do Bonus Offers Shorten Unemployment Insurance Spells? Results from the Washington Experiment

Author

Abstract

Unemployment insurance is intended to reduce hardship by providing labor force members with partial wage replacement during periods of involuntary unemployment. However, in performing this income maintenance function, unemployment insurance may prolong spells of unemployment. Evidence from a field experiment conducted in Illinois in 1984 suggested that offering unemployment insurance claimants a modest cash bonus for rapid reemployment would increase the speed of return to work and reduce program costs. In 1988 a similar experiment, examining several different bonus offers, was conducted in the state of Washington. Evidence from the Washington experiment indicates that bonus offers do change job seeking behavior, but that only relatively generous bonus offers-about six times the weekly benefit amount-should be expected to significantly change the behavior of people eligible for unemployment benefits.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Christopher J. O'Leary & Robert G. Spiegelman & Kenneth J. Kline, "undated". "Do Bonus Offers Shorten Unemployment Insurance Spells? Results from the Washington Experiment," Upjohn Working Papers cjo19954, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:upj:weupjo:cjo19954
    Note: Appears in Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 14(2): 245-269
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3325152?origin=crossref
    Download Restriction: All working papers are copyrighted.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. van der Klaauw, B. & van Ours, J.C., 2010. "Carrot and Stick : How Reemployment Bonuses and Benefit Sanctions Affect Job Finding Rates," Other publications TiSEM f368f876-0bd7-499d-8211-d, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    2. Louis S. Jacobson & Robert J. LaLonde & Daniel G. Sullivan, 2005. "Is retraining displaced workers a good investment?," Economic Perspectives, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, vol. 29(Q II), pages 47-66.
    3. Christopher J. O’Leary & Paul T. Decke & Stephen A. Wandner, 2005. "Cost-Effectiveness of Targeted Reemployment Bonuses," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 40(1).
    4. Yosuke Oda, 2008. "Alteration in Skills and Career-Enhancing in a Frictional Labor Market," Discussion Papers in Economics and Business 08-09, Osaka University, Graduate School of Economics.
    5. repec:mpr:mprres:3507 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Christopher J. O'Leary, 2017. "Evaluating Public Employment Programs with Field Experiments: A Survey of American Evidence," Upjohn Working Papers 17-279, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
    7. Carl Davidson & Stephen A. Woodbury, 1996. "Unemployment Insurance and Unemployment Implications of the Reemployment Bonus Experiments," Book chapters authored by Upjohn Institute researchers, in: Advisory Council on Unemployment Compensation: Background Papers, volume 3, pages KK1-KK37, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • 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

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:upj:weupjo:cjo19954. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask the person in charge to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/upjohus.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.