Do re‐employment bonuses increase employment? Evidence from the Idaho Return to Work Bonus programme
研究了爱达荷州2020年推出的重返工作奖金计划，发现该计划使就业人口比率上升3.6个百分点、失业率下降0.7个百分点，对加速劳动力市场复苏有显著作用。
Abstract In June 2020, Idaho announced the Return to Work Bonus (RWB) programme, which provided residents who returned to work with bonuses of up to $1500. We present difference‐in‐differences, triple differences, event studies and synthetic control estimates suggesting that the programme may have supported employment and workforce participation following its enactment. For example, from difference‐in‐differences estimates, we find that the employment–population ratio rose by 3.6 percentage points, the unemployment rate fell by 0.7 percentage points, and the non‐participation rate fell by 2.9 percentage points in Idaho relative to other states following the introduction of the RWB programme. If these results from Idaho were to generalize to the economy as a whole, then they would not be enough to arrest a moderate recession, but they would meaningfully accelerate labour market recovery. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to study the effects of re‐employment bonuses on the US labour market outside an experimental setting.