Market Externalities of Large Unemployment Insurance Extension Programs

46 Pages Posted: 3 Oct 2013

See all articles by Rafael Lalive

Rafael Lalive

University of Lausanne - Department of Economics; IZA Institute of Labor Economics; CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute for Economic Research)

Camille Landais

London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE)

Josef Zweimüller

University of Zurich - Department of Economics; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute); IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Multiple version iconThere are 3 versions of this paper

Date Written: September 30, 2013

Abstract

This paper offers quasi experimental evidence of the existence of spillover effects of UI extensions using a unique program that extended unemployment benefits drastically for a subset of workers in selected regions of Austria. We use non-eligible unemployed in treated regions, and a difference-in-difference identification strategy to control for preexisting differences across treated and untreated regions. We uncover the presence of important spillover effects: in treated regions, as the search effort of treated workers plummets, the job finding probability of untreated workers increases, and their average unemployment duration and probability of long term unemployment decrease. These effects are the largest when the program intensity reaches its highest level, then decrease and disappear as the program is scaled down and finally interrupted. We use this evidence to assess the relevance of different assumptions on technology and the wage setting process in equilibrium search and matching models and discuss the policy implications of our results for the EUC extensions in the US.

Keywords: unemployment insurance, benefit extension, market externality, macro effects

JEL Classification: J650, J210, J220

Suggested Citation

Lalive, Rafael and Landais, Camille and Zweimueller, Josef, Market Externalities of Large Unemployment Insurance Extension Programs (September 30, 2013). CESifo Working Paper Series No. 4413, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2334696 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2334696

Rafael Lalive (Contact Author)

University of Lausanne - Department of Economics ( email )

Batiment Internef
Lausanne, 1015
Switzerland

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute for Economic Research)

Poschinger Str. 5
Munich, DE-81679
Germany

Camille Landais

London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE) ( email )

Josef Zweimueller

University of Zurich - Department of Economics ( email )

Zuerich, 8006
Switzerland
+411 634 3724 (Phone)
+411 634 4907 (Fax)

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

London
United Kingdom

CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute)

Poschinger Str. 5
Munich, DE-81679
Germany

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

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