Optimal Life Cycle Unemployment Insurance

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Michelacci, Claudio; Ruffo, Hernan
• 署名单位: Universidad Torcuato Di Tella
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0002-8282
• DOI: 10.1257/aer.20111559
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 816-859
• 关键词: AGE-DEPENDENT TAXES; duration dependence; displaced workers; social insurance; earnings losses; job loss; liquidity; taxation; search; WEALTH

摘要

We argue that US welfare would rise if unemployment insurance were increased for younger and decreased for older workers. This is because the young tend to lack the means to smooth consumption during unemployment and want jobs to accumulate high-return human capital. So unemployment insurance is most valuable to them, while moral hazard is mild. By calibrating a life cycle model with unemployment risk and endogenous search effort, we find that allowing unemployment replacement rates to decline with age yields sizeable welfare gains to US workers.