Unemployment Insurance Schemes in Developing Countries

这一拟议的研究项目将利用关于40多万工人就业历史的大型数据集，研究最有效的失业支助形式。这些就业数据将与研究的支出和失业补偿数据相结合。 研究人员将对不同类型的失业补偿（失业保险、一次性支付和无保险）进行分类，并使用复杂的方法分析失业工人获得的失业补偿类型如何影响他们的消费。 然后，研究人员将开发一种理论，结合经济学和心理学的见解来解释观察到的接受不同类型失业补偿的失业工人的消费模式差异。然后，研究人员将利用这些结果讨论政策建议。 这项研究的结果将为发达国家和发展中国家的失业补偿政策提供宝贵的投入。 研究结果还将被用作制定政策的投入，以改善劳动力市场的运作，从而促进美国和世界各地的经济增长。 最后，本研究项目的结果可供个人在失业期间规划其消费。 关于失业保险（UI）和裁员时一次性支付（的组合）之间的最佳选择的争论集中在前者的抑制与后者由于失业持续时间的不确定性而无法平滑消费之间的权衡。 很少有经验和理论研究这种权衡，特别是在发展中国家，正在努力发展自己的失业补偿制度。 本研究计划将利用理论和大量数据，调查失业补偿计划的类型如何影响下岗工人的消费轨迹。 该项目遵循了经济学文献中的一条线索，记录了经济冲击前后的消费情况。PI将为40多万人建立一个新的正规就业和支出的高频纵向微观数据，并利用这个数据集和丰富的经验设置，其中包括工人失业保险计划的多种变化来源，以记录新的经验发现。然后，该项目将估计解释这些消费模式的行为结构模型，并评估其解释经验观察的能力。然后，该项目将利用估算模型讨论失业补偿计划的政策影响，特别是对发展中国家的影响。该研究项目的成果将为失业补偿计划和其他劳动力市场政策的制定提供关键投入，改善劳动力市场的功能，并在此过程中促进经济增长。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This proposed research project will study the most efficient form of unemployment support using a large data set on the employment history of over 400,000 workers. This employment data will be combined with expenditure and unemployment compensation data for the study. The researchers will categorize different types of unemployment compensation (unemployment insurance, lump sum payments, and no insurance) and use sophisticated methods to analyze how the type of unemployment compensation unemployed workers receive affects affect their consumption over time. The researchers will then develop a theory that combines the insights of both economics and psychology to explain the observed differences in consumption patterns of unemployed workers receiving different types of unemployment compensation. The researchers will then use the results to discuss policy recommendations. The results of this research will provide valuable inputs into unemployment compensation policies in both developed and developing worlds. The results will also be used as an input to develop policies to improve the functioning of labor markets, hence enhance economic growth both in the US and around the world. Finally, the results of this research project can be used by individuals to plan their consumption during periods of unemployment. The debate about the optimal choice between (combinations of) unemployment insurance (UI) and lump sum payment at the time of layoff focuses on the tradeoff between the disincentive from the former to the inability to smoothen consumption because of the uncertainty of unemployment duration in the case of the latter. There is very little empirical and theoretical investigation of this tradeoff, especially in developing countries that are struggling to develop their unemployment compensation systems. The proposed research project will use theory and large data sets to investigate how the type of unemployment compensation scheme affects the consumption trajectories of laid off workers. The project follows a strand in the economics literature that documents consumption profiles around economic shocks. The PIs will build a new high-frequency longitudinal microdata of formal employment and expenditure for more than 400,000 individuals and exploit this dataset and a rich empirical setting with multiple sources of variation in unemployment insurance schemes across workers to document new empirical findings. The project will then estimate structural models of behaviors that explain these consumption patterns and evaluate their ability to explain the empirical observations. The project will then use the estimated models to discuss policy implications for unemployment compensation schemes, particularly for developing countries. The results of this research project will provide critical inputs into the formulation of unemployment compensations schemes and other labor market policies, improve the functioning of labor markets and in the process, increase economic growth.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.