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American Economic Review Vol. 105 No. 5 2015

The Effect of Unemployment Benefits on the Duration of Unemployment Insurance Receipt: New Evidence from a Regression Kink Design in Missouri, 2003–2013

David Card1; Andrew C. Johnston2; Pauline Leung3; Alexandre Mas4; Zhuan Pei5

1 University of California, Berkeley, 549 Evans Hall #3880, Berkeley, CA 94720, NBER, and IZA (e-mail: ) · 2 University of Pennsylvania, 3000 Steinberg-Dietrich Hall, 3620 Locust Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104 (e-mail: ) · 3 Princeton University, Firestone Library, Princeton, NJ 08544 (e-mail: ) · 4 Princeton University, Firestone Library, Princeton, NJ 08544, NBER, and IZA (e-mail: ) · 5 Department of Economics, Brandeis University, MS 021, 415 South Street, Waltham, MA 02453 (e-mail: )

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Abstract

We provide new evidence on the effect of the unemployment insurance (UI) weekly benefit amount on unemployment insurance spells based on administrative data from the state of Missouri covering the period 2003-2013. Identification comes from a regression kink design that exploits the quasi-experimental variation around the kink in the UI benefit schedule. We find that UI durations are more responsive to benefit levels during the recession and its aftermath, with an elasticity between 0.65 and 0.9 as compared to about 0.35 pre-recession.

DOI
10.1257/aer.p20151061
Volume
105
Issue
5
Pages
126-130
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib crossref openalex

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