Essays on Unemployment Insurance

Gerhard Castro de Britto, Diogo (2015) Essays on Unemployment Insurance, [Dissertation thesis], Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna. Dottorato di ricerca in European doctorate in law and economics, 28 Ciclo. DOI 10.6092/unibo/amsdottorato/7249.
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Abstract

Can the potential availability of unemployment insurance (UI) affect the behavior of employed workers and the duration of their employment spells? After discussing few straightforward reasons why UI may affect employment duration, I apply a regression kink design (RKD) to address this question using linked employer-employee data from the Brazilian labor market. Exploiting the UI schedule, I find that potential benefit level significantly affects the duration of employment spells. This effect is local to low skilled workers and, surprisingly, indicates that a 1\% increase in unemployment benefits increases job duration by around 0.3\%. Such result is driven by the fact that higher UI decreases the probability of job quits, which are not covered by UI in Brazil. These estimates are robust to permutation tests and a number of falsification tests. I develop a reduced-form welfare formula to assess the economic relevance of this result. Based on that, I show that the positive effect on employment duration implies in a higher optimal benefit level. Moreover, the formula shows that the elasticity of employment duration impacts welfare just with the same weight as the well-known elasticity of unemployment duration to benefit level.

Abstract
Tipologia del documento
Tesi di dottorato
Autore
Gerhard Castro de Britto, Diogo
Supervisore
Dottorato di ricerca
Scuola di dottorato
Scienze economiche e statistiche
Ciclo
28
Coordinatore
Settore disciplinare
Settore concorsuale
Parole chiave
Unemployment Insurance, regression kink design
URN:NBN
DOI
10.6092/unibo/amsdottorato/7249
Data di discussione
8 Dicembre 2015
URI

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