Vortrag von Prof. Dr. Conny Wunsch am 07.06.18: „Does less generous unemployment insurance reduce inflows? Evidence from Germany“

Im Rahmen des Forschungskolloquiums des Instituts für Wirtschaftswissenschaften der Universität Freiburg möchten wir Sie herzlich zum Vortrag von

Prof. Dr. Conny Wunsch

(Universität Basel)

über das Thema

Does less generous unemployment insurance reduce inflows? Evidence from Germany

einladen.

Der Vortrag findet am Donnerstag, 7. Juni 2018, 12:00 Uhr s.t. in Raum 206 (Breisacher Tor) statt.

Abstract

We study the link between the generosity of unemployment insurance (UI) and exits from employment to UI. In 2004 Germany announced a reform that involved reductions to the maximum period over which workers could collect UI benefits. The reductions varied by age and were quite substantial, especially for older workers. Workers in their 50s and above stood to lose up to 14 months of benefits. The effects of this reform differed dramatically by age and time period. Just before the announced reforms took effect in February 2006, older workers left their jobs to take up UI at rates roughly five times greater than their pre-announcement levels. After the reforms were in place, older workers reduced their exit rates. Prime-age workers hardly responded at all. We show that these heterogeneous responses are consistent with a model that views UI as a precursor to retirement rather than as insurance against unemployment. We estimate that the reform saved Germany roughly 5 billion Euros through the end of 2007, although roughly 20 percent of the savings that are attributable to behavioral responses to the reform were offset by higher costs due to the spike in anticipatory exit rates. We also study the welfare effects of the reform. We derive a formula for the welfare change which results in a sufficient statistic that only depends on quantities we can estimate with our data. We further show that the welfare response can be decomposed into a wealth effect and a moral hazard effect, which can be estimated based on the same quantities.