Unemployment accounts

Setty, Ofer (2012): Unemployment accounts.

Abstract

Unemployment Accounts (UA) are mandatory individual saving accounts that can be used by governments as an alternative to the Unemployment Insurance (UI) system. I study a two tier UA-UI system where the unemployed withdraw from their unemployment account until it is exhausted and then receive unemployment benefits. The hybrid policy provides insurance to workers more efficiently than a traditional UI because it provides government benefits selectively. Using a structural model calibrated to the US economy, I find that relative to a two tier UI system the hybrid policy leads to a welfare gain of 0.9%.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Unemployment Accounts; Unemployment Insurance; Job-search; Moral hazard; Mechanism Design; Optimal Policy
• Subjects: E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics > E2 - Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal Economy > E24 - Employment ; Unemployment ; Wages ; Intergenerational Income Distribution ; Aggregate Human Capital ; Aggregate Labor Productivity; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J6 - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers > J65 - Unemployment Insurance ; Severance Pay ; Plant Closings; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J6 - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers > J64 - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search; E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics > E6 - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook > E61 - Policy Objectives ; Policy Designs and Consistency ; Policy Coordination

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