These Caps Spilleth Over: Equilibrium Effects of Unemployment Insurance

Cynthia Doniger

No 2022-074, Finance and Economics Discussion Series from Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.)

Abstract: The design of US unemployment insurance (UI) policy--which features benefits assigned as a percentage of past wages up to a cap--engenders tests for spillovers from policy variation to workers who are not directly treated. We test for and find a pattern of spillovers from state-level UI policy changes that cannot be neatly reconciled with workhorse or cutting-edge models of UI spillovers. Instead, we show that the documented pattern conforms with the predictions of a canonical model of information frictions: wage posting with random search. Taken together, our results provide novel evidence of quantitatively- and policy-relevant information frictions in this market. Moreover, our estimates suggest that aggregate unemployment of insured individuals would decrease if the replacement rate were increased while holding the cap constant.

Keywords: Unemployment insurance; Spillover; Wage posting; Random search; Information friction; Monopsony (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D42 D62 D83 H23 J42 J64 J65 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 69 p.
Date: 2022-11-04
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2022-74

DOI: 10.17016/FEDS.2022.074

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