The Limited Macroeconomic Effects of Unemployment Benefit Extensions

Gabriel Chodorow-Reich and Loukas Karabarbounis

No 22163, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: By how much does an extension of unemployment benefits affect macroeconomic outcomes such as unemployment? Answering this question is challenging because U.S. law extends benefits for states experiencing high unemployment. We use data revisions to decompose the variation in the duration of benefits into the part coming from actual differences in economic conditions and the part coming from measurement error in the real-time data used to determine benefit extensions. Using only the variation coming from measurement error, we find that benefit extensions have a limited influence on state-level macroeconomic outcomes. We use our estimates to quantify the effects of the increase in the duration of benefits during the Great Recession and find that they increased the unemployment rate by at most 0.3 percentage point.

JEL-codes: E24 E62 J64 J65 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pr~, nep-mac and nep-pbe
Note: EFG LS ME PE
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (34)

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Related works:
Working Paper: The Limited Macroeconomic Effects of Unemployment Benefit Extensions (2017)
Working Paper: The Limited Macroeconomic Effects of Unemployment Benefit Extensions (2017)
Working Paper: The Limited Macroeconomic Effects of Unemployment Benefit Extensions (2016)
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