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Seminar in Applied Microeconomics presented by Ioana Marinescu (Penn)
21 March 2019, 12:15 pm–1:45 pm
'Unemployment Insurance and Job Search Behavior' with Daphne Skandalis
Event Information
Open to
- UCL staff | UCL students
Availability
- Yes
Organiser
-
Department of Economics
Location
-
Room 321Drayton House30 Gordon StreetLondonWC1H 0AXUnited Kingdom
About the Speaker
Ioana Marinescu
Assistant Professor of Economics at Penn
Ioana Marinescu is an economist who studies the labor market to craft policies that can enhance employment, productivity, and economic security. Dr Marinescu’s research expertise includes online job search, workforce development, unemployment insurance, the universal basic income, and employment contracts.
Abstract:
Why do longer unemployment benefits cause longer unemployment spells? We document the time path of search behavior for 500,000 French unemployed workers entitled to various benefit durations. Search effort and the job finding hazard increase by 60% just before benefit exhaustion and decrease symmetrically after. Target wages decrease by 0.1% every month until benefit exhaustion, then remain constant. While standard search models cannot explain the drop in search effort after benefit exhaus- tion, our results confirm that search behavior is a key determinant of unemployment duration. Overall, longer benefits delay job finding mostly by postponing a spike in search effort.
Why do longer unemployment benefits cause longer unemployment spells? We document the time path of search behavior for 500,000 French unemployed workers entitled to various benefit durations. Search effort and the job finding hazard increase by 60% just before benefit exhaustion and decrease symmetrically after. Target wages decrease by 0.1% every month until benefit exhaustion, then remain constant. While standard search models cannot explain the drop in search effort after benefit exhaus- tion, our results confirm that search behavior is a key determinant of unemployment duration. Overall, longer benefits delay job finding mostly by postponing a spike in search effort.