Do Unemployment Benefits Increase Unemployment? New Evidence on an Old Question

Peter Fredriksson and Martin Söderström ()
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Martin Söderström: National Institute of Economic Research - NIER

No 3570, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We examine the relationship between unemployment benefits and unemployment using Swedish regional data. To estimate the effect of an increase in unemployment insurance (UI) on unemployment we exploit the ceiling on UI benefits. The benefit ceiling, coupled with the fact that there are regional wage differentials, implies that the generosity of UI varies regionally. More importantly, the actual generosity of UI varies within region over time due to variations in the benefit ceiling. We find fairly robust evidence suggesting that the actual generosity of UI does matter for regional unemployment. Increases in the actual replacement rate contribute to higher unemployment as suggested by theory. We also show that removing the wage cap in UI benefit receipt would reduce the dispersion of regional unemployment. This result is due to the fact that low unemployment regions tend to be high wage regions where the benefit ceiling has a greater bite. Removing the benefit ceiling thus implies that the actual generosity of UI increases more in low unemployment regions.

Keywords: unemployment dispersion; unemployment insurance; unemployment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J64 J65 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2008-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ias and nep-lab
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Published - published as 'The Equilibrium Impact of Unemployment Insurance on Unemployment: Evidence from a Non-linear Policy Rule' in: Journal of Public Economics, 2020, 187, 104199

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Working Paper: Do unemployment benefits increase unemployment? New evidence on an old question (2008)
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