Labor Market Responses to Unemployment Insurance: The Role of Heterogeneity

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Birinci, Serdar; See, Kurt
• 署名单位: Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - St. Louis; Bank of Canada
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-MACROECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7707
• DOI: 10.1257/mac.20200057
• 发表日期: 2023
• 页码: 388-430
• 关键词: equilibrium unemployment; cyclical behavior; job; liquidity; benefits; search; cycles

摘要

We document considerable scope of heterogeneity within the unem-ployed, especially when they are divided along eligibility for and receipt of unemployment insurance (UI). We study the implica-tions of this heterogeneity on UI's insurance-incentive trade-off using a heterogeneous-agent job search model capable of match-ing the wealth and income differences that distinguish UI recip-ients from nonrecipients. Insurance benefits are larger for UI recipients who are predominantly wealth poor. Meanwhile, incen-tive costs are nonmonotonic in wealth because the poorest individ-uals, who value employment, exhibit weak responses. Differential elasticities imply that accounting for the composition of recipients is material to the evaluation of UI's insurance-incentive trade-off.