Unemployment Insurance and Unemployment Accounts: The Best of Both Worlds
研究了一种结合失业保险和失业账户的混合政策，通过校准美国经济数据发现，相比最优失业保险，该政策能带来2.4%的福利提升，更有效地为工人提供保险并平滑消费。
Abstract Unemployment accounts are mandatory individual savings accounts that can be used only during unemployment or retirement. Unlike unemployment insurance, unemployment accounts solve the moral hazard problem but provide no public insurance to workers. I study a hybrid system that borrows from concepts of both unemployment insurance and unemployment accounts, in which workers are mandated to save when employed and can withdraw from the account when unemployed. Once the account is exhausted, the unemployed worker receives unemployment benefits. This hybrid policy provides insurance to workers more efficiently than an unemployment insurance system because it provides government benefits selectively. As a consequence, young workers can reduce their precautionary savings and better smooth their consumption over the life cycle. Calibrating the model to the US economy, I find that, relative to an optimal unemployment insurance system, the optimal hybrid policy leads to a welfare gain of 2.4%, measured as consumption equivalent variation.