Recent extensions of U.S. unemployment benefits: search responses in alternative labor market states

Robert Valletta

IZA Journal of Labor Policy, 2014, vol. 3, issue 1, 1-25

Abstract: In response to the 2007–09 “Great Recession,” the maximum duration of U.S. unemployment benefits was increased from the normal level of 26 weeks to an unprecedented 99 weeks. I estimate the impact of these extensions on job search, comparing them with the more limited extensions associated with the milder 2001 recession. The analyses rely on monthly matched microdata from the Current Population Survey. I find that a 10-week extension of UI benefits raises unemployment duration by about 1.5 weeks, with little variation across the two episodes. This estimate lies in the middle-to-upper end of the range of past estimates. JEL codes J64; J65 Copyright Valletta; licensee Springer. 2014

Keywords: Unemployment benefits; Job search (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J64 J65 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1186/2193-9004-3-18 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Recent Extensions of U.S. Unemployment Benefits: Search Responses in Alternative Labor Market States (2014)
Working Paper: Recent Extensions of U.S. Unemployment Benefits: Search Responses in Alternative Labor Market States (2014)
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:izalpo:v:3:y:2014:i:1:p:1-25:10.1186/2193-9004-3-18

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/40173

DOI: 10.1186/2193-9004-3-18

Access Statistics for this article

IZA Journal of Labor Policy is currently edited by Juan F. Jimeno, David Neumark and Núria Rodríguez-Planas

More articles in IZA Journal of Labor Policy from Springer, Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().