Die Bund-Länder-Kommission "Zukunftspakt Pflege" soll bis zum Jahresende 2025 Grundlagen für eine Pflegereform erarbeiten. Ihr Arbeitsauftrag steht unter dem Oberziel der Beitragssatzstabilität. Dazu beschäftigt sich die Kommission unter anderem mit der Frage, ob eine erweiterte...

The United States experienced an unprecedented increase in unemployment insurance (UI) claims beginning in March 2020. State UI-benefit systems were strained beyond their administrative capacity to process the dual challenge of an unprecedented increase in claims and changes to UI benefits. In...

his paper studies how the unemployment insurance system should be designed when considering costly self-control. The standard optimal unemployment insurance with dynamic moral hazard features declining benefits over the unemployment spell, without a lower bound on consumption...

This paper studies how unemployment benefits affect aggregate outcomes through general equilibrium effects. First, we document that lower unemployment benefits tend to reduce the real interest rate in a structural vector autoregression with narrative sign restrictions. Young workers experience...

Die Bund-Länder-Kommission "Zukunftspakt Pflege" soll bis zum Jahresende 2025 Grundlagen für eine Pflegereform erarbeiten. Ihr Arbeitsauftrag steht unter dem Oberziel der Beitragssatzstabilität. Dazu beschäftigt sich die Kommission unter anderem mit der Frage, ob eine erweiterte...

An important principle of the EU is that mobile persons do not lose their social security rights when moving to another Member State. Therefore, the EU rules on the coordination of social security systems provide that persons are entitled to export their benefits to another Member State. Article...

The EU rules on the coordination of social security systems are based on some key principles protecting the social security rights of persons moving within the EU: a) the determination of a single applicable legislation; b) the prohibition of discrimination, reinforced by the equal treatment of...

In this paper, we present QMDE, an empirical quarterly stock-flow consistent (SFC) model of Denmark. It is categorized as a medium-sized model to strike a balance between complexity and economic intuition. This model provides a nuanced understanding of Denmark's economic structure, segmenting it...

We evaluate the effectiveness of Belgium's short-time work (STW) program during the Great Recession, a period when the country recorded the highest STW take-up rate in Europe. STW allows firms to reduce working hours in response to temporary shocks while avoiding layoffs, playing a key role in...

The report assesses options as regards the management and operation of a new Unemployment Benefit Fund (UBF) in Eswatini. Two institutions have been proposed by the Government as potential operators - the Public Sector Pension Fund (PSPF) and the Eswatini National Provident Fund (ENPF). Based on...

In the United States, workers whose past earnings were below a threshold are generally ineligible for unemployment insurance (UI), creating a discontinuous jump in the value of being unemployed. Using a regression discontinuity design with administrative panel data, we estimate a sizable local...

While extensive research on unemployment insurance (UI) has examined how benefits affect workers' job search, little is known about how eligibility conditions shape firms' hiring decisions. These conditions, often requiring a minimum work history, affect the value workers place on contracts...

Unemployment insurance (UI) acts both as a disincentive for labor supply and as a demand stimulus, which may explain why empirical studies often find limited effects of UI on employment. This paper provides independent estimates of the disincentive effects arising from the largest expansion of...

We exploit policy discontinuities in Poland’s unemployment insurance to examine the causal effect of changes to both benefit durations and levels. Using a regression discontinuity approach, we uncover three findings: (1) Higher benefit levels distort employment more than benefit extensions....

We quantify micro and macro effects of changes in the potential benefit duration (PBD) in unemployment insurance. In Poland, the PBD is 12 months for the newly unemployed if the previous year's county unemployment rate is more than 150% of the national average, and 6 months otherwise. We exploit...

Female workers in China have a de jure right to maternity benefits, as enshrined in policy and legal documents since the 1950s. This article examines why this entitlement is not always de facto guaranteed as stipulated in the legislation. We use the conceptual framework of gradual institutional...

Cash benefit programmes have increasingly emphasised conditionality and "demanding" forms of activation in recent decades. Behavioural requirements are now a key element in reforms of unemployment benefits (UB) and related out-of-work benefits in high-income OECD countries, and they are the...

The long period of fast economic growth in China has created entrenched patterns of dualization in the labour market, and in social security. Chinese law calls for all employment to be formalized and covered by a relatively generous system of five social insurances, including one for...

In a union of states with partial mobility of households and firms we analyze the setting of minimum wages against the background of unemployment insurance. We find that unemployment insurance is always efficiently organized by decentral decisions. In contrast, for symmetric states only the...

This paper provides novel insights into labor market dynamics during the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent recovery period in Uruguay. Using social security administrative records, we focus on the gender-differentiated patterns of labor market transitions following the pandemic outbreak,...

When searching for employment, workers consider non-wage job characteristics, such as effort requirements or amenities. We study an environment where unemployed workers search for jobs of different quality in a labor market characterized by directed search. In equilibrium, firms are more likely...

This paper tests whether partially unemployed workers value future preserved benefits when they bunch at the kink of the unemployment insurance benefit-withdrawal schedule. I extend the bunching formula of Saez (2010) to a dynamic setting that accounts for the value of future benefits tied to...

This paper introduces a novel framework for designing fair and sustainable unemployment benefits, grounded in cooperative game theory and real-time fiscal policy. The labor market is modeled as a coalitional game, where a random subset of participants is employed, generating stochastic economic...

Welfare benefit sanctions are a common tool in many social insurance systems. Using a regression discontinuity design based on close elections, we investigate how representatives’ political alignment influences the implementation of a new sanction regime in the UK. Our results show that...

Spikes in exits at unemployment insurance (UI) benefit exhaustion into other benefit schemes such as sickness insurance (SI) are well-documented. These spikes could be driven by relatively healthy workers maximizing their total duration of benefit receipt, or workers in ill health who remain on...

This paper provides a structural analysis of the role of job vacancy referrals (VRs) by public employment agencies in the job search behavior of unemployed individuals, incorporating institutional features of the monitoring of search behavior by the agencies. Notably, rejections of VRs may lead...

I study the labor market risks associated with being self-employed. I document that the self-employed are subject to larger earnings fluctuations than employees and that they frequently transition into unemployment. Given the self-employed are not eligible to unemployment insurance, I analyze...