Individual unemployment accounts (IUAs) attenuate the moral hazard attached to unemployment insurance. However, the available literature provides no policy recommendation about what percentage of the contributions should go to IUAs. We propose criteria of actuarial neutrality and use a simple...

I model job-search monitoring in the optimal unemployment insurance framework, in which job-search effort is the worker's private information. In the model, monitoring provides costly information upon which the government conditions unemployment benefits. Using a simple one-period model with two...

The paper analyzes key labor market and institutional features of developing countries that affect functioning of unemployment insurance: a large informal sector, weak administrative capacity, and large political risk. It argues that these countries should tailor an OECD-style unemployment...

Der vorliegende Artikel wendet die Theorie über optimale Steuer-Transfer-Systeme an, um eine bestmögliche Relation zwischen Leistungen für Erwerbsfähige und Nichterwerbsfähige zu finden. An einem Beispiel in Anlehnung an die Arbeitsmarktsituation im Freistaat Sachsen werden mögliche...

Unemployment increased drastically over the course of the Great Recession from 4.5 percent prior to the recession to 10 percent at its peak in October 2009. Since then, the unemployment rate has come down steadily, and it stood at 5.8 percent in November 2014. Based on existing analyses and some...

Labor market policies succeed or fail at least in part depending on how well they reflect or account for behavioral responses. Insights from behavioral economics, which allow for realistic deviations from standard economic assumptions about behavior, have consequences for the design and...