Optimal Unemployment Insurance in an Estimated Job Search Model with Savings

This paper estimates a job search model with savings and determines optimal unemployment benefit policy for the estimated model. For observed and unobserved worker characteristics, the estimation strategy relates observed unemployment spell durations to the model implied unemployment hazard rate. The model is estimated on Danish unemployment spell data which include high quality wealth and income information. The estimation shows that Danish workers respond to changes in economic incentives in ways consistent with the model and that the magnitude of the effect of the responses on the unemployment hazard rate is small. Optimal unemployment benefit level policy is determined as a trade-off between providing insurance against consumption fluctuation and the moral hazard of reducing the worker's incentives to search back into employment. Given the estimated low level of moral hazard, the optimal benefit level is quite high even though workers can self-insure via savings. Depending on the interest rate which is effectively the cost of using savings as self-insurance, the optimal replacement rate ranges between 43% and 82%. The policy analysis emphasizes the importance of including transitional dynamics to avoid a significant downward bias associated with a simple steady state comparison analysis.

Job Search and Savings: Wealth Effects and Duration Dependence

In this paper we consider a risk averse worker who is moving back and forth between employment and unemployment; layoffs are random and beyond the worker’s influence, while the re-employment chance is directly affected by search effort. We characterize the worker’s optimal savings and job-search behavior as well as the resulting consumption paths and wealth formation. In general, all decisions will depend on the current level of wealth: First, the choice of search effort increases as wealth decreases, a finding which is in accordance with our empirical duration analysis using micro data on unemployment spells. Second, consumption increases with wealth both when the worker is employed and unemployed. Third, savings provide insurane against income fluctuations but this insurance is not perfect; precautionary savings are built up during employment spells and run down during unemployment spells but the consumption path is never going to be completely smooth over states. Finally, our results suggest that the worker’s search intensity and hence the probability of leaving unemployment will exhibit positive duration dependence over unemployment spells via its inverse relationship with the worker’s wealth.Search, consumption smooting, duration dependence

An Empirical Model of Growth Through Product Innovation

Productivity dispersion across firms is large and persistent, and worker reallocation among firms is an important source of productivity growth. The purpose of the paper is to estimate the structure of an equilibrium model of growth through innovation that explains these facts. The model is a modified version of the Schumpeterian theory of firm evolution and growth developed by Klette and Kortum (2004). The data set is a panel of Danish firms than includes information on value added, employment, and wages. The model's fit is good and the structural parameter estimates have interesting implications for the aggregate growth rate and the contribution of worker reallocation to it.labor productivity growth; worker reallocation; firm dynamics; firm panel data estimation

Productivity Growth and Worker Reallocation: Theory and Evidence

Dispersion in labor and factor productivity across firms is large and persistent, large flows of workers move across firms, and worker reallocation is an important source of productivity growth. The purpose of the paper is to provide a formal explanation for these observations that clarifies the role of worker reallocation as a source of productivity growth. Specifically, we study a modified version of the Schumpeterian model of growth induced by product innovation developed by Klette and Kortum (2002). More productive firms are those that supply higher quality products in the model. We show that more productive firms grow faster and the reallocation of workers across continuing firms contributes to aggregate productivity growth if and only if current productivity predicts future productivity. We provide evidence in support of the hypothesis that more productive firms become larger in Danish data. In addition, we provide estimates of the distribution of productivity at entry and the parameters of the cost of investment in innovation function and other structural parameters that all firms are assumed to face by fitting the model to observations on value added, employment, and wages drawn from a panel of Danish firms for the years 1992-1997.

On the Job Search and the Wage Distribution

Estimates of the structural parameters of a job separation model derived from the theory of on-the-job search are reported in this paper. Given that each employer pays the same wage to observably equivalent workers but wages are dispersed across employers, the theory implies that an employer's separation flow is the sum of an exogenous outflow unrelated to the wage paid and a job-to-job flow that decreases with the employer's wage. The specification estimated allows worker search effort to depend on the wage currently earned. The empirical results imply that search effort declines with the wage paid, as the theory predicts, using Danish IDA data for the years 1994-1995. Furthermore, the estimates for the full sample and four occupational sub-samples explain the employment effect, defined as the horizontal difference between the distribution of wages earned and the distribution of wages offered.