Should Unemployment Insurance Vary With the Unemployment Rate? Theory and Evidence
Kory Kroft and
Matthew Notowidigdo
No 17173, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc
Abstract:
We study how the level of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits that trades off the consumption smoothing benefit with the moral hazard cost of distorting job search behavior varies over the business cycle. Empirically, we find that the moral hazard cost is procyclical, greater when the unemployment rate is relatively low. By contrast, our evidence suggests that the consumption smoothing benefit of UI is acyclical. Using these estimates to calibrate our model, we find that a one standard deviation increase in the unemployment rate leads to a roughly 14 to 27 percentage point increase in the welfare-maximizing wage replacement rate.
JEL-codes: H5 J64 J65 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cta, nep-ias and nep-lab
Note: LS PE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (73)
Published as Kory Kroft & Matthew J. Notowidigdo, 2016. "Should Unemployment Insurance Vary with the Unemployment Rate? Theory and Evidence," The Review of Economic Studies, vol 83(3), pages 1092-1124.
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w17173.pdf (application/pdf)
Related works:
Journal Article: Should Unemployment Insurance Vary with the Unemployment Rate? Theory and Evidence (2016) 
Working Paper: Should Unemployment Insurance Vary with the Unemployment Rate? Theory and Evidence (2012) 
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:nbr:nberwo:17173
Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w17173
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().