It is puzzling that people feel quite unhappy when they become unemployed, while at thesame time active labor market policies are needed to bring unemployed back to work morequickly. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we investigate whether there isindeed such a puzzle. First, we...

In Portugal duration of benefits is exclusively age determined while replacement rates are toall intents and purposes uniform. We exploit differences in potential maximum duration ofbenefits for nearly matched pairs of individuals who differ in age by one year and in potentialmaximum duration of...