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 influcence, 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 insurance 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.

Menu Auctions with Demand Uncertainty.

We apply a Bernheim-Whinston (1986) type mechanism to a situation where a single buyer with uncertain demand wishes to buy from a small number of suppliers. We let suppliers bid a payment contingent on own quantity supplied, and another payment contingent on the realization of total demand. We show that there is a unique equilibrium which is also efficient. This equilibrium is equivalent to the one under the ‘truthful bids’ restriction used in the model without uncertainty in Bernheim-Whinston (1986).procurement; efficient auctions; multi unit auctions; uniqueness

Optimal Workfare in Unemployment Insurance

Most workers are only partially insured against unemployment. One reason is that high unemployment compensation creates a free rider problem when monitoring of job search behavior is limited; people who do not seek employment (non-workers) may nevertheless collect unemployment compensation. We show that unproductive workfare for unemployed workers may improve unemployment insurance if workers and non-workers value leisure differently. If they differ only with respect to productivity workfare has to be based on a productivity related task requirement (task workfare); a simple time requirement (time workfare) is not enough. Task workfare is simply a better screening device, also implying that task workfare Pareto dominates time workfare. Finally, we show that the scope for using workfare is larger the smaller are the transfers from workers to non-workers.workfare; unemployment insurance

Marriage, wealth, and unemployment duration: a gender asymmetry puzzle

This note presents evidence of the following gender asymmetry: the job-finding effort of married men and women is affected by the income of their spouses in opposite directions. For women, spouse income influences job finding negatively, just as own wealth does: the more the man earns and the wealthier the woman is, the longer it takes for her to find a job. The contrary is the case for men, where spouse income affects job finding positively: the more the wife earns, the faster the husband finds a job. This is so despite the fact that greater own wealth also prolongs unemployment spells for men. These findings are hard to reconcile with the traditional economic model of the family

Voluntary Public Unemployment Insurance

Voluntary public unemployment systems are limited to a handful of countries, including Finland, Sweden, and, more substantially, Denmark. A voluntary system has the positive feature of other user-cost schemes, potentially efficient targeting of services. This presumes rational behavior as well as reasonable risk rating of premiums and the absence of worker access to alternative social programs. Using a 10% sample of the Danish population drawn from administrative data, we exploit the voluntary Danish system to explore the structure of unemployment insurance demand. The insurance take-up rate is surprisingly high, 80 percent in 1995, but varies systematically with economic incentives in a way that raises doubts about the targeting value of the current system. Political support for the Danish system may derive instead from the fact that a universal, compulsory system would generate rather modest additional net funds and with a twist--additional revenue would come disproportionately from low-wage workers.

Voluntary Public Unemployment Insurance

Denmark has drawn much attention for its active labor market policies, but is almost unique in offering a voluntary public unemployment insurance program requiring a significant premium payment. A safety net program a less generous, means-tested social assistance plan completes the system. The voluntary system emerged as one of many European "Ghent systems," essentially government subsidized trade union plans, but has since lost many key features of such plans. We assess system performance using a 10% sample of the Danish population drawn from administrative data. Coverage rates for the voluntary programs are surprisingly high, approximately 80 percent of the workforce, but the program has predictable selection effects, including adverse selection across risk classes and a substantial charity hazard (low coverage among those with generous treatment under the safety net program). The latter appears to explain the difficulty of shifting to a compulsory system; redistribution effects would be concentrated among the previously uninsured in the lowest decile of the income distribution, a problem in the Danish welfare state

Labour market policy and the equity-efficiency trade-off

This paper studies labour market policy in a society where differently gifted individuals can invest in training to further increase their labour market productivity. Furthermore, the government seeks both efficiency and equity. Frictions in the matching process create unemployment and differently skilled workers face different unemployment risks. We show that in such an environment, training programmes targeted to the disadvantaged workers complement passive transfers (UI benefits), unlike a general training subsidy. Combining passive subsidies with a training subsidy conditioned on individual unemployment duration the typical Active Labour Market Programme implies a favorable trade-off between equity and efficiency which encourages relative high spending on training

Voluntary Public Unemployment Insurance

Denmark has drawn much attention for its active labor market policies, but is almost unique in offering a voluntary public unemployment insurance program requiring a significant premium payment. A safety net program--a less generous, means-tested social assistance plancompletes the system. The voluntary system emerged as one of many European Ghent systems, essentially government subsidized trade union plans, but has since lost many key features of such plans. We assess system performance using a 10% sample of the Danish population drawn from administrative data. Coverage rates for the voluntary programs are surprisingly high, approximately 80 percent of the workforce, but the program has predictable selection effects, including adverse selection across risk classes and a substantial charity hazard (low coverage among those with generous treatment under the safety net program). The latter appears to explain the difficulty of shifting to a compulsory system; redistribution effects would be concentrated among the previously uninsured in the lowest decile of the income distribution, a problem in the Danish welfare state

Unrestricted Duopoly Competition: Equilibrium and Survival

This paper is inspired by the ever lasting discussions over Bertrand's (1883) price-deviation critique of Cournot's (1838) duopoly analysis. We consider a homogenous good duopoly with constant marginal costs and no capacity constraints, but we allow firms to set either a quantity, a price, or both. We derive two main results. First, this model has two duopoly equilibria, one where firms commit only to prices (Bertrand behavior) and one where they commit only to quantities (Cournot behavior), and it has equilibria supporting a perfect contestable market where one firm supplies the entire market at a price equal to marginal costs. Second, the Cournot behavior is best fit for survival in terms of evolutionary stability. This provides an argument for the existence of quantity-commitment institutions like auctions in oligopolistic markets for homogenous goods.homegenous duopoly; Cournot vs. Bertrand; price and quantity competition

Efficient Competition with Small Numbers - with Applications to Privatisation and Mergers

This paper studies competition between a small number of suppliers and a single buyer, (or an auction with a small number of bidders and a single seller) when total demand (supply) is uncertain. It is well known that when a small number of suppliers compete in supply functions the service is not provided efficiently. We show that production efficiency is obtained if suppliers compete in simple two-part bid functions. However, profits are not eliminated. Moreover, the buyers´ (sellers´) decision regarding how much to buy is not efficient. We also show that suppliers (bidders in an auction) always have an incentive to merge (form bidding rings) in this setting.supply function competition; multi unit auctions; efficiency; deregulation of electricity generation; privatisation; mergers