Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/217154 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2019
Citation: 
[Journal:] Quantitative Economics [ISSN:] 1759-7331 [Volume:] 10 [Issue:] 2 [Publisher:] The Econometric Society [Place:] New Haven, CT [Year:] 2019 [Pages:] 693-733
Publisher: 
The Econometric Society, New Haven, CT
Abstract: 
I model job-search monitoring in the optimal unemployment insurance framework, in which job-search effort is the worker's private information. In the model, monitoring provides costly information upon which the government conditions unemployment benefits. Using a simple one-period model with two effort levels, I show analytically that the monitoring precision increases and the utility spread decreases if and only if the inverse of the worker's utility in consumption has a convex derivative. The quantitative analysis that follows extends the model by allowing a continuous effort and separations from employment. That analysis highlights two conflicting economic forces affecting the optimal precision of monitoring with respect to the generosity of the welfare system: higher promised utility is associated not only with a higher cost of moral hazard, but also with lower effort and lower value of employment. The result is an inverse U-shaped precision profile with respect to promised utility
Subjects: 
Unemployment insurance
optimal contracts
moral hazard
jobsearch monitoring
JEL: 
D82
E24
J64
J65
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by-nc Logo
Document Type: 
Article

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.