Social Insurance, Information Revelation, and Lack of Commitment

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Golosov, Mikhail; Iovino, Luigi
• 署名单位: University of Chicago; Bocconi University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-3808
• DOI: 10.1086/715022
• 发表日期: 2021
• 页码: 2629-2665
• 关键词: OPTIMAL INCOME-TAX; optimal taxation; redistribution; constraints

摘要

We study optimal provision of unemployment insurance in a model where agents privately observe arrival of job opportunities and government's ability to commit is imperfect. Imperfect commitment implies that full information revelation is generally suboptimal. Social welfare is convex in the probability with which agents reveal their private information. In the optimum, each agent is provided with incentives to either fully reveal his private information or not reveal it at all. The optimal contract can be decentralized by a joint system of unemployment and disability benefits in a way that resembles how these systems are used in practice.