Fiscal Externalities and Optimal Unemployment Insurance

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Lawson, Nicholas
• 署名单位: University of Quebec; University of Quebec Montreal
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-ECONOMIC POLICY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7731
• DOI: 10.1257/pol.20140396
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 281-312
• 关键词: social insurance; optimal level; moral hazard; matching equilibrium; benefits; POLICY; liquidity; MODEL

摘要

A common finding of the optimal unemployment insurance (UI) literature is that the optimal replacement rate is around 50 percent; however, a key assumption is that UI is the only government spending activity. I show that optimal UI levels may be dramatically reduced when UI is a small part of overall spending: the negative impact of UI on income tax revenues implies added welfare costs, a mechanism that I call a fiscal externality. Using both a standard calibrated structural job search model and a sufficient statistics method, I find that the optimal replacement rate is zero when fiscal externalities are incorporated.