The Optimal Timing of Unemployment Benefits: Theory and Evidence from Sweden

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Kolsrud, Jonas; Landais, Camille; Nilsson, Peter; Spinnewijn, Johannes
• 署名单位: University of London; London School Economics & Political Science; Stockholm University
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0002-8282
• DOI: 10.1257/aer.20160816
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 985-1033
• 关键词: REGRESSION KINK DESIGN; duration dependence; INSURANCE BENEFITS; social insurance; risk preferences; labor-market; job search; consumption; expenditure; INFORMATION

摘要

This paper provides a simple, yet robust framework to evaluate the time profile of benefits paid during an unemployment spell. We derive sufficient-statistics formulae capturing the marginal insurance value and incentive costs of unemployment-benefits paid at different times during a spell. Our approach allows us to revisit separate arguments for inclining or declining profiles put forward in the theoretical literature and to identify welfare-improving-changes in the benefit profile that account for all relevant arguments jointly: For the empirical implementation, we use administrative data on unemployment, linked to data on consumption, income, and wealth in Sweden. First, we exploit duration-dependent kinks in the replacement rate and find that, if anything, the moral hazard cost of benefits is larger when paid earlier the spell. Second, we find that the drop in consumption affecting the insurance value of benefits is large from the start of the spell, hut further increases throughout tie spell. In trading off insurance and incentives, our analysis suggests that the flat benefit profile in Sweden has been too generous overall. However, both from the insurance and the incentives side, we find no evidence to support the introduction of a declining tilt in the profile.