Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics

Working Paper Series,
IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy

No 2002:21: Optimal unemployment insurance with monitoring and sanctions

Jan Boone (), Peter Fredriksson (), Bertil Holmlund () and Jan van Ours ()
Additional contact information
Jan Boone: IFAU - Institute for Labour Market Policy Evaluation, Postal: P O Box 513, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden
Peter Fredriksson: IFAU - Institute for Labour Market Policy Evaluation, Postal: P O Box 513, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden
Bertil Holmlund: IFAU - Institute for Labour Market Policy Evaluation, Postal: P O Box 513, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden
Jan van Ours: IFAU - Institute for Labour Market Policy Evaluation, Postal: P O Box 513, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden

Abstract: This paper analyzes the design of optimal unemployment insurance in a search equilibrium framework where search effort among the unemployed is not perfectly observable. We examine to what extent the optimal policy involves monitoring of search effort and benefit sanctions if observed search is deemed insufficient. We find that introducing monitoring and sanctions represents a welfare improvement for reasonable estimates of monitoring costs; this conclusion holds both relative to a system featuring indefinite payments of benefits and a system with a time limit on unemployment benefit receipt.

Keywords: Unemployment insurance; search; sanctions

JEL-codes: J64; J65; J68

29 pages, November 26, 2002

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Published as
Jan Boone, Peter Fredriksson, Bertil Holmlund and Jan van Ours, (2007), 'Optimal unemployment insurance with monitoring and sanctions', Economic Journal, pages 399-421

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