The Impact of Unemployment Benefit Extensions on Employment: The 2014 Employment Miracle?

Iourii Manovskii, Marcus Hagedorn and Kurt Mitman

No 11060, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: We measure the aggregate effect of unemployment benefit duration on employment and the labor force. We exploit the variation induced by Congress' failure in December 2013 to reauthorize the unprecedented benefit extensions introduced during the Great Recession. Federal benefit extensions that ranged from 0 to 47 weeks across U.S. states were abruptly cut to zero. To achieve identification we use the fact that this policy change was exogenous to cross-sectional differences across U.S. states and we exploit a policy discontinuity at state borders. Our baseline estimates reveal that a 1% drop in benefit duration leads to a statistically significant increase of employment by 0.019 log points. In levels, 2.1 million individuals secured employment in 2014 due to the benefit cut. More than 1.1 million of these workers would not have participated in the labor market had benefit extensions been reauthorized.

Keywords: Aggregate employment; Labor force; Macroeconomic stabilization; Search and matching; Unemployment insurance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 E62 E65 J65 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ias, nep-lma, nep-mac and nep-pbe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Related works:
Working Paper: The Impact of Unemployment Benefit Extensions on Employment: The 2014 Employment Miracle? (2015)
Working Paper: The Impact of Unemployment Benefit Extensions on Employment: The 2014 Employment Miracle? (2015)
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