Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/200552 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2019
Series/Report no.: 
Working Paper No. 2019-14
Publisher: 
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Atlanta, GA
Abstract: 
Using variations in unemployment insurance policies over time and across U.S. states, this paper provides evidence that allowing unemployed workers to delay the collection of benefits increases their job-finding rate. In a model with discrete job take-up decisions, benefit entitlement, wage-indexed benefits, and heterogeneous job types, I demonstrate that the policy can increase an unemployed worker's willingness to work, even though more benefits in general reduce the relative value of employment. In a calibrated quantitative model, I find that allowing delayed benefit collection increases the overall job finding rates and may lower the unemployment rate both in a steady state stationary economy and over a transition path during 2008−12.
Subjects: 
unemployment insurance
social program design
Great Recession
JEL: 
E24
J65
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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