Unemployment benefits and redundancies: Incidence and timing effects

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Khoury, Laura
• 署名单位: Universite PSL; Universite Paris-Dauphine
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2023.104984
• 发表日期: 2023
• 关键词: Unemployment insurance; behavioral responses; Bunching; bargaining

摘要

The literature on unemployment insurance (UI) has primarily focused on its impact on unemployment outflows. Using administrative data and a discontinuity in UI benefits at a job tenure threshold, I show that inflows also respond to the generosity of UI. Based on bunching estimates, I measure that 10% of layoffs in an 4-week window before the threshold are delayed, creating a bunching mass on the high-benefit side of the cutoff. Examining the mechanisms, the evidence suggests that employers and employees bargain over contract termination. Taken together, employers and employees show sophisticated reactions to UI with effects on employment duration. However, this retiming response accounts for a very small share of the fiscal externality of differentiating UI benefits at a tenure threshold, relative to the moral hazard cost.