scholarly journals Front-Loading the Unemployment Benefit: An Empirical Assessment

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 140-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Attila Lindner ◽  
Balázs Reizer
Keyword(s):  
Unemployment Insurance ◽  
Policy Reform ◽  
Behavioral Responses ◽  
Sharp Change ◽  
Unemployment Benefit ◽  
Unemployment Benefits ◽  
Cost Increase ◽  
Empirical Assessment ◽  
Pareto Improving

We estimate the effect of front-loading unemployment benefit payments on nonemployment duration and reemployment wages. Exploiting a sharp change in the path of benefits for those who claimed unemployment benefits after November 1, 2005 in Hungary, we show that nonemployment duration fell by two weeks, while reemployment wages rose by 1.4 percent as a result of front-loading. We show that these behavioral responses were large enough to offset the mechanical cost increase of the unemployment insurance. We argue that our results indicate that benefit front-loading was a Pareto improving policy reform as both unemployed and employed workers were made better off. (JEL D91, J31, J64, J65)

From Work to Welfare: Institutional Arrangements Shaping Turkish Marriage Migrants’ Gendered Trajectories into a New Society

2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 964-998 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vibeke Jakobsen ◽  
Anika Liversage
Keyword(s):  
Unemployment Insurance ◽  
Institutional Arrangement ◽  
Unemployment Benefit ◽  
Unemployment Benefits ◽  
Mixed Methods Approach ◽  
Ethnic Networks ◽  
Marriage Migrants ◽  
Unemployment Insurance System ◽  
Gendered Patterns ◽  
Gendered Expectations

Using a mixed methods approach, this article examines gendered patterns of employment and of unemployment benefit uptake among Turkish marriage migrants in Denmark. The results show that men use co-ethnic networks to access entry positions. Subsequent eligibility for unemployment benefits enable these men to search for better jobs. Women enter employment more slowly and tell of such entry being related to entering the unemployment insurance system, enabling them to periodically conform to gendered expectations as homemakers. Pakistani marriage migrants display similar patterns, indicating the centrality of this institutional arrangement in low-skilled marriage migrants’ active adaptation to a new society.

scholarly journals Distributive Consequences of Risk Privatization: The Case of the Swedish Unemployment Insurance System

2020 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 207-235
Author(s):  
Jayeon Lindellee
Keyword(s):  
Unemployment Insurance ◽  
Unemployment Benefit ◽  
Income Loss ◽  
The Public ◽  
Insurance Benefit ◽  
Insurance Program ◽  
Unemployment Insurance Benefit ◽  
Income Insurance ◽  
Unemployment Insurance System ◽  
Retail Workers

Abstract The public unemployment insurance program in Sweden has retrenched in terms of its benefit generosity in the last three decades. As a response to this trend, in which an ever-smaller proportion of the previous income of unemployed persons is compensated by public unemployment insurance benefit, complementary income insurance schemes provided by unions have expanded rapidly in the last 15 years, currently covering one half of the working population. What does this change mean for people who need income protection upon unemployment and are more likely to find themselves unemployed or underemployed? By analyzing survey-based benefit recipiency data among retail workers who were unemployed in 2014, this article explores the outcomes of the multi-pillarized unemployment benefit provision system in Sweden. While public unemployment insurance benefit does not fully compensate for the income loss for the majority of retail workers, the promise of a complementary income insurance scheme seems to be illusory for many individuals as they repeatedly oscillate between precarious work and benefits, accompanied by the burden of navigating a complex system.

scholarly journals Worlds of welfare collide

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-44
Author(s):  
Gráinne McKeever ◽  
Mark Simpson
Keyword(s):  
Social Insurance ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
Conservative System ◽  
Unemployment Benefit ◽  
Unemployment Benefits ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Asymmetric Shocks ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Operational Issues ◽  
The Eu

The post-2007 financial crisis has brought renewed interest in a European Unemployment Benefit Scheme (EUBS) as a manifestation of solidarity between citizens of different Member States and an economic stabiliser in the event of future asymmetric shocks. The EU-wide benefit would operate in tandem with existing national unemployment benefits. This creates challenges of compatibility given the diversity of approaches to social security within the Union, based on at least four philosophies of welfare: liberal, conservative, social democratic and southern European. This article examines potential legal, operational and political difficulties associated with marrying a EUBS that is at heart a conservative system of social insurance to the UK’s liberal welfare state. Few legal obstacles exist and although the addition of a new, earnings-related benefit to an already complex mix of social protection would raise significant operational issues, these need not be insurmountable. However, fundamental ideological differences would have rendered the EUBS as proposed politically ill-matched with the UK even absent the June 2016 vote to leave the EU. A contributory income maintenance benefit is a poor fit with a residual, largely means-tested national system whose role is limited to offering protection against severe poverty while maintaining work incentives and minimising costs.

State Intervention and Mental Well-being Among the Unemployed

2001 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
MATTIAS STRANDH
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
Unemployment Benefit ◽  
Unemployment Benefits ◽  
Active Labour Market Policy ◽  
Active Labour ◽  
Policy Measures ◽  
The Unemployed ◽  
Mental Well Being ◽  
Positive Effect

Although the relationship between unemployment and poor mental well-being has long been an area of interest within behavioural science, the role of state intervention in the unemployment situation has not been thoroughly investigated. This article investigates how unemployment benefit systems and active labour market policy measures affect mental well-being among the unemployed in Sweden. The study uses a longitudinal and nationally representative survey of 3,500 unemployed Swedes. Three different types of active labour market policy measures involving the unemployed were studied, ‘activation’, ‘vocational training’ and ‘work-place participation’ measures. Of these only involvement in ‘workplace participation’ was found to have a clearly positive effect on mental well-being among those participating. Of the two Swedish unemployment benefit systems, the more generous income replacement Unemployment Benefits and the less generous flat rate Cash Unemployment Benefits, only access to income replacement Unemployment Benefits was found to mediate the mental well-being impact of unemployment. The positive effect of access to income replacement Unemployment Benefits was further accentuated when unemployment was prolonged. Those with access to this benefit system seemed to suffer no further deterioration of mental well-being, while the mental well-being of the rest of the unemployed further deteriorated.

scholarly journals Basic Income, Wages, and Productivity: A Laboratory Experiment

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Veera Amanda Jokipalo
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Experimental Design ◽  
Laboratory Experiment ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Cash Transfers ◽  
Unemployment Benefit ◽  
Basic Income ◽  
Unemployment Benefits ◽  
The Impact

Abstract This paper reports the results of an economic lab experiment designed to test the impact of Basic Income (BI) on wages and productivity. The experimental design is based on the classic gift exchange game. Participants assigned the role of employer were tasked with making wage offers, and those assigned as employees chose how hard they would work in return. In addition to a control without any social security net, BI was compared to unemployment benefits, and both types of cash transfers were tested at two levels. The results are that wage offers were increased in both the BI and unemployment benefit treatments compared to the control. The higher-level BI treatment also significantly increased effort. Further experimentation could shed more light on how the potential extra value created in the labor market through increased productivity would be divided between employers and employees.

scholarly journals Civic Virtue and Labor Market Institutions

2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yann Algan ◽  
Pierre Cahuc
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Unemployment Insurance ◽  
Civic Virtue ◽  
Employment Protection ◽  
Labor Market Institutions ◽  
Unemployment Benefits ◽  
Public Insurance ◽  
Civic Attitudes ◽  
Civic Virtues ◽  
Cross Country

We argue civic virtue plays a key role in explaining the design of public insurance against unemployment risks by solving moral hazard issues which hinder the efficiency of unemployment insurance. We show, in a simple model, that economies with stronger civic virtues are more prone to provide insurance through unemployment benefits rather than through job protection. We provide cross-country empirical evidence of a strong correlation between civic attitudes and the design of unemployment benefits and employment protection in OECD countries over the period 1980 to 2003. We then use an epidemiological approach to estimate the existence of a potential causal relationship from inherited civic virtue to labor market insurance institutions. (JEL: J41, J65, J68, Z13)

The impact of unemployment insurance on employment norms and income levels: the inevitable drift into 'reduced activity'

2000 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 592-611
Author(s):  
Carole Tuchszirer
Keyword(s):  
Unemployment Insurance ◽  
Insurance Fund ◽  
Unemployment Benefit ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Unemployed People ◽  
The Unemployed ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Low Pay ◽  
Reduced Activity ◽  
Better Than

The aim of this article is to analyse a specific set of support instruments for the unemployed, namely those introduced in 1986 by the bipartite French unemployment insurance fund (UNEDIC) for those in casual employment. Under the new scheme, unemployed people were able to combine a limited income from casual employment with a part of their unemployment benefit, for a period of up to 18 months. Based on the dubious assumption that even precarious employment is better than full-time unemployment, this opportunity was designed to induce the unemployed to take up employment of any kind. The article considers in detail the economic and social context prevailing prior to the introduction of these measures, concluding that precarious, casual employment far from serves as a springboard to permanent employment, but that, on the contrary, it may lead an increasing number of people into underemployment and low-pay traps.

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