Seminar
Research seminar: Generosity versus Duration Trade-Off and the Optimization Ability of the Unemployed
- Speaker
- Laura Khoury, NHH
- Date
- 12 September 2019
- When
- 11:45 - 12:45
- Where
- Auditoriet, SSB, Akersveien 26
Content
Laura Khoury, NH: https://sites.google.com/view/laurakhoury/home
Abstract: In this paper, I exploit an uncommon setting of the French unemployment insurance (UI) scheme, the fact that the unemployed are given the choice between two UI entitlements when they experience a very large drop in income entering unemployment. It introduces a trade-off between the level of UI benefits and the potential benefit duration, which can be used to discern preferences of the unemployed over the level of insurance coverage desired. Using administrative unemployment data, I provide descriptive evidence to analyse the determinants of the choice. The presence of eligibility criteria allows to assess the labour market impact of the chosen compensation contract, through a fuzzy regression discontinuity design. The Wald estimate suggests that opting for higher benefits for a shorter duration is predicted to increase the subsequent paid unemployment spell duration by more than five months. Although this very large negative impact has to be qualified by the low effect found in the long-run total number of days on benefits, it raises some questions on the efficiency of a policy targeting a population already at risk on the labour market.
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