The last three recessions in the United States were followed by jobless recoveries: while labor productivity recovered, unemployment remained high. In this paper, we show that countercyclical unemployment benefit extensions lead to jobless recoveries. We augment the standard Mortensen-Pissarides...

We measure the aggregate effect of unemployment benefit duration on employment and the labor force. We exploit the variation induced by Congress' failure in December 2013 to reauthorize the unprecedented benefit extensions introduced during the Great Recession. Federal benefit extensions that...

We critically review recent methodological and empirical contributions aiming to provide a comprehensive assessment of the effects of unemployment benefit extensions on the labor market and attempt to reconcile their apparently disparate findings. We describe two key challenges facing these...

We measure the aggregate effect of unemployment benefit duration on employment and the labor force. We exploit the variation induced by Congress' failure in December 2013 to reauthorize the unprecedented benefit extensions introduced during the Great Recession. Federal benefit extensions that...

How should unemployment benefits vary in response to the economic crisis induced by the COVID-19 pandemic? We answer this question by computing the optimal unemployment insurance response to the COVID-induced recession.We compare the optimal policy to the provisions under the CARES Act—which...

Countercyclical unemployment benefit extensions in the United States act as a propagation mechanism, contributing to both the high persistence of unemployment and its weak correlation with productivity. We show this by modifying an otherwise standard frictional model of the labor market to...

How should unemployment benefits vary in response to the economic crisis induced by the COVID-19 pandemic? We answer this question by computing the optimal unemployment insurance response to the COVID-induced recession.We compare the optimal policy to the provisions under the CARES Act-which...