The Macro Effects of Unemployment Benefit Extensions: a Measurement Error Approach*
利用数据修正将失业救济金期限的变动分解为经济状况差异和测量误差两部分，仅用测量误差部分估计发现，救济金延期对州级宏观经济影响有限，在大衰退期间最多使失业率上升0.3个百分点。
By how much does an extension of unemployment benefits affect macroeconomic outcomes such as unemployment? Answering this question is challenging because U.S. law extends benefits for states experiencing high unemployment. We use data revisions to decompose the variation in the duration of benefits into the part coming from actual differences in economic conditions and the part coming from measurement error in the real-time data used to determine benefit extensions. Using only the variation coming from measurement error, we find that benefit extensions have a limited influence on state-level macroeconomic outcomes. We apply our estimates to the increase in the duration of benefits during the Great Recession and find that they increased the unemployment rate by at most 0.3 percentage point.