Unemployment duration and economic incentives—a quasi random-assignment approach

Abstract

We investigate how economic incentives and spell duration affect hazard rates out of insured unemployment. We take into account that insured unemployment not always ends in employment, but also in disability, training programs, or benefit sanctions. Our empirical basis is Norwegian register data containing variation in economic incentives and spell duration similar to that of random-assignment experiments. We find that the employment and benefit-sanction hazards are negatively affected by the unemployment insurance replacement ratio, but that the effects vary considerably among individuals. There is negative duration dependence in the employment hazard and positive duration dependence in the disability hazard.