Analyzing the Relation of Unemployment Insurance to Unemployment

摘要

The paper presents a framework for analyzing the relation of unemployment insurance to unemployment and applied the framework to evaluate recent developments in the UI literature and future research needs. Unemployment is decomposed into more basic elements related to the labor market flows which determine unemployment incidence and duration. It is also disaggregated by reason for unemployment -- e.g., entry into the labor force or quit last job. A matrix containing those definitional elements of unemployment which may be affected by variations in characteristics of the UI system is central to the framework. The discussion of each of these elements focuses on recent theoretical and empirical studies which analyze how they are influenced by features of the UI system. By proceeding systematically through the elements which comprise unemployment and considering the major behavioral explanations linking the unemployment insurance system to unemployment; it is possible to determine where the analysis has proceeded satisfactorily and where major gaps remain.