The US Unemployment Insurance Scheme: A Model for the EU?

Christiaan Luigjes (), Georg Fischer () and Frank Vandenbroucke ()
Additional contact information
Christiaan Luigjes: University of Amsterdam
Georg Fischer: Vienna Institute for Intern. Economic Studies
Frank Vandenbroucke: University of Amsterdam

Intereconomics: Review of European Economic Policy, 2019, vol. 54, issue 5, 314-318

Abstract: Abstract The system of unemployment insurance (UI) used in the United States has often been cited as a model for Europe. The American model illustrates that it is possible to create and maintain a UI system based on federal-state co-financing that intensifies during economic crises and thus reinforces protection and stabilisation. Central requirements and conditional funding can improve the aggregate protection and stabilisation capacity of the system. However, the architecture of the US system financially incentivises states to organise retrenchment of their own efforts for UI, which in turn leads to a divergence of benefit generosity and coverage levels. During the Great Recession, the federal government mitigated these incentives for retrenchment through minimum requirements attached to federal financial intervention. With regards to the European unemployment re-insurance system debate, the US experience implies both positive and encourageing conclusions and cautionary lessons.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10272-019-0844-x Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:intere:v:54:y:2019:i:5:d:10.1007_s10272-019-0844-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://link.springer.de/orders.htm

DOI: 10.1007/s10272-019-0844-x

Access Statistics for this article

Intereconomics: Review of European Economic Policy is currently edited by Christian Breuer

More articles in Intereconomics: Review of European Economic Policy from Springer, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().