Thesis (doctoral)--Université de Lausanne.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Economics, December 2000. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

The objective of this study is to measure and compare unemployment insurance (UI) policies among different countries based on generosity and efficiency. A modified modeling framework from Pallage, Scruggs, and Zimmermann (2013) is utilized that excludes savings by agents but incorporates endogenous job search intensities. To measure UI generosity two models are created: 1) a simple model where everyone is eligible for UI and receives benefits indefinitely until re-employment; and 2) a complex model, based on realistic UI policy, which incorporates a waiting period, a UI entitlement status, benefit payments and durations, as well as social assistance policies. The models are calibrated to match an unemployment rate and a share of short-term unemployment of a specific country. The only difference between the two models is the UI policy in place. The generosity metric is then calculated as the replacement ratio in the simple model such that agents are indifferent between the simple UI scheme and the complex (realistic) UI policy. Alongside the generosity metric, an efficiency measure is created that measures the utility loss from moving from the benchmark UI system (offering optimum level of benefits) to the realistic UI system. The countries investigated are Canada, United States, France, and Germany post and pre Hartz reforms. The main results show that Germany pre-reform is the most generous system followed by USA, Germany post-reform, France, and Canada. Rankings based on efficiency display similar pattern. A welfare comparison between Germany pre and post Hartz reform showed that the reform reduced UI generosity, decreased UI efficiency, and caused welfare to either decline or slightly increase depending on the specified risk aversion coefficient. Finally, the sensitivity results reveal that USA is the least generous UI system when housing assistance is removed from the social assistance benefit calculations.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Michigan State University. Dept. of Economics. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 116-118).

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Thesis advisor: Matthew S. Rutledge / Thesis advisor: Christopher F. Baum / Social insurance programs exist in the United States to help workers maintain their standard of living across different states of the world. Examples include unemployment insurance, which aids workers through the state of being unemployed, and Social Security, which supports workers through the state of retirement. The three essays in this dissertation study how these types of social insurance programs alter the decisions workers make in the labor market. The first and third essays focus on unemployment insurance, where the first essay focuses on how different types of workers make decisions in the presence of unemployment insurance and the third essay studies how all workers respond to changes in the provision of unemployment insurance. The second essay examines how Social Security retirement income influences the decision of late-career workers to participate in the labor market. All three essays emphasize that the willingness of workers to pursue a job in the labor market relies upon the social insurance available to them outside of employment. Theoretical models of optimal unemployment insurance predict that the job search and savings behavior of unemployed workers will partially be determined by how long a worker expects to remain unemployed. Empirical evidence suggests, however, that workers often underestimate the duration of their unemployment spell. These biased beliefs about the duration of unemployment among unemployed workers should therefore affect their job search and savings behavior. To date, no reliable data have been used to empirically analyze to what degree biased beliefs would change the behavior of unemployment workers. In the first essay, titled 'Biased Beliefs and Job Search: Implications for Optimal Unemployment Insurance,' I use a novel dataset, the Survey of Unemployed Workers in New Jersey, to evaluate how biased beliefs vary across unemployed workers and how they influence the behavior of those workers. I find that overly-optimistic unemployed workers underestimate the duration of their unemployment, leading them to spend 26 percent less time searching for a job each week than those with a pessimistic bias. I also find that overly-optimistic unemployed workers have over $8,500 less saved at any given point during an unemployment spell. These results suggest that unemployed workers with an optimistic bias would benefit from an information "nudge" that encourages increased search effort and could lead to faster reemployment. The first essay demonstrates how workers respond to the presence of social insurance when they are still focused on rejoining the labor market. That is, it provides evidence on the intensive margin. However, it does not say anything about how it would influence a worker's desire to participate in the labor market at all, on the extensive margin. In the second essay, 'Do Late-Career Wages Boost Social Security More for Women than Men?,' Matthew Rutledge and I estimate the incentives for older workers to continue working during their retirement-age years when they could be collecting Social Security. Any worker who delays claiming Social Security receives a larger monthly benefit because of the actuarial adjustment. Some claimants - particularly women, who are more likely to take time out of the labor force early in their careers - can further increase their benefits if the extra years of work raise their career average earnings by displacing lower-earning years. This essay uses the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) linked to earnings records to quantify the impact of women's late-career earnings on Social Security benefits relative to men's. The essay finds that the average gain in Social Security retirement benefits from working one additional year raises women's monthly benefits by 8.6 percent, of which 1.6 percent is from late-career earnings. These results suggest that, especially among women, there are additional benefits to delaying claiming and further increasing the retirement age. Through both of the first two chapters, the parameters outlining the social insurance program were held constant. In reality, the rules of a social insurance program can change over time. Motivated by this possibility, my third chapter, 'The Impact of Unemployment Insurance Extensions on Worker Job-Search Behavior,' explores how reservation wages and job search effort respond to extensions of unemployment insurance. Current economic theory predicts that reservation wages should rise following an extension of potential benefit duration, while search effort should fall. Previous papers in this literature focus on the end result, which is that UI extensions result in prolonged unemployment spells. Using the Survey of Unemployed Workers in New Jersey, and the UI benefit extension in the United States in November 2009, this paper identifies the worker behaviors that lead to prolonged unemployment durations. Employing hypothesis testing and event study analysis, this study shows there are lagged, significant increases in reservation wages and decreases in search effort following the benefit extension. The results suggest that an alternative model of job search is needed. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

LL.D.

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No description available.

<p>This thesis deals with the incidence and economic effects of payroll taxes earmarked for unemployment insurance. A major objective is to provide an appropriate theoretical framework for a discussion of this issue. In cases where D.I. coverage is reasonably comprehensive, S6 that the D.I. tax can be regarded as a broad based tax, it is argued that the proper engine of analysis is basically the standard macroeconomic general equilibrium model. The macroeconomic effects of taxation, whether they originate from the demand or supply side, are regarded as an integral part of incidence analysis.</p> <p>The standard macro framework requires modification in one direction, which is a ~ore detailed development of the aggregate labour supply function. This reflects the view that the most important macroeconomic effects of unemployment insurance are likely to emerge from the supply side, via work incentives.</p> <p>A number of variants of a small macroeconomic model are developed, each incorporating an explicit modelling of a hypothetical D.I. system. Qualitative incidence results are obtained using the traditional method of comparative statics, while a quantitative dimension is added in static and dynamic simulation exercises with plausible parameter values drawn from the relevant econometric literature. Different versions of the model employ various alternative hypotheses about the way in which the labour market operates and/or different specifications of the aggregate labour supply function.</p> <p>The incidence results depend largely on the effect of payroll tax increases on labour supply. In the so-called neoclassical version of the model, for example, payroll tax increases reduce both participation and average weeks worked by participants, but tax and benefit rates are connected via the D.I. budget constraint, and benefit rate changes also effect labour supply. An increase in the benefit rate will tend to reduce average weeks worked by participants but to increase participation itself. Therefore a balanced budget increase in payroll tax rates has a potentially ambiguous effect on labour supply. If the net impact on lahour supply is negative we obtain the 'standard' incidence results. A balanced budget increase in payroll tax rates reduces output and emplo)~ent, increases the general price level, and reduces both capital and labour income. (Similar results also occur in other versions of the model in which the labour market does not clear due to (e.g.) real or money wage rigidity.) On the other hand, if the net impact on labour supply is positive we obtain 'perverse' results, increases in output and employment, reductions in the price level and so on.</p> <p>The comparative static analysis and simulation exercises enable us to identify the key parameters in the aggregate labour supply function, and their critical values. For plausible parameter values, chosen on the basis of the available empirical evidence, it would appear that perverse results are not likely. However, there is clearly a need for more empirical investigation in this area.</p> <p>These results conflict with the traditional view that labour bears the full burden of payroll taxation, but we conclude that this view depends heavily on the assumed inelasticity of the aggregate labour supply function. The latter assumption is demonstrated to be inconsistent with the bulk of the empirical evidence on labour supply.</p> <p>Finally, some attention is also paid to the aggregate demand effects of unemployment insurance, in particular the case where the savings propensity out of U.I. benefits is less than that out of private factor incomes.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)