Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics
Working Paper Series,
Uppsala University, Department of Economics
No 2001:20: Optimal Unemployment Insurance with Monitoring and Sanctions
Jan Boone, Peter Fredriksson (), Bertil Holmlund () and Jan van Ours ()
Additional contact information
Jan Boone: Department of Economics, Postal: Tilburg University, Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands
Peter Fredriksson: Department of Economics, Postal: Uppsala University, P.O. Box 513, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden
Bertil Holmlund: Department of Economics, Postal: Uppsala University, P.O. Box 513, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden
Jan van Ours: CentER for Economic Research, Postal: Tilburg University, Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands
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. The optimal sanction rates implied by our calibrated model are much higher than the sanction rates typically observed in European labor markets.
Keywords: Unemployment insurance; search; sanctions
30 pages, November 2, 2001
Full text files
2001wp20.pdf
- Published as
- Jan Boone, Peter Fredriksson, Bertil Holmlund and Jan van Ours, (2007), 'Optimal Unemployment Insurance with Monitoring and Sanctions', Economic Journal, vol 117, pages 399-421
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