Unemployment Insurance as a Worker Indiscipline Device? Evidence from Scanner Data
利用大衰退期间各州失业保险福利期限的外生变化与超市收银员的高频生产率数据匹配，发现福利期限延长会小幅但显著降低工人生产率，尤其对经验丰富和效率较低的收银员影响更大。
We provide causal evidence of an ex ante moral hazard effect of unemployment insurance (UI ) by matching plausibly exogenous changes in UI benefit duration across state-weeks during the Great Recession to high-frequency productivity measures from individual supermarket cashiers. Estimating models with date and cashier-register fixed effects, we identify a modest but statistically significant negative relationship between UI benefits and worker productivity. This effect is strongest for more experienced and less productive cashiers, for whom UI expansions are especially relevant. Additional analyses from the American Time Use Survey reveal a similar increase in shirking during periods with increased UI benefit durations.