Publication: How Viable Are Unemployment Insurance Savings Accounts? Simulation Results for Slovenia
Abstract
Applying a methodology similar to Feldstein and Altman (1998) to Slovenia's unemployment insurance (UI) system, the paper shows that unemployment insurance savings accounts (UISAs) are a viable alternative to a modest, but not generous, UI system. Under the modest regime, only one quarter of workers end their working life with a negative cumulative balance and 43% ever experience a negative UISA balance; in contrast, under the generous regime, 49% of workers end their working life with a negative cumulative balance and 66% ever experience a negative balance. The simulations also show that the level of redistribution under UISAs lags behind the redistribution implied by the UI system.
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Publication Unemployment Insurance Simulation Model (UISIM)(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-12)This note describes the key features of the Unemployment Insurance Simulation Model (UISIM) - how the model is structured, what data inputs are needed, and what outputs the model generates (the model comes with user's and technical manuals, which provide detailed information about how to operate the model and how it calculates the outputs). For illustrative purposes, the note also presents an example where the model is used to generate simulations for a countrywide unemployment insurance (UI) system. The appendix to the note describes typical data sources and provides a detailed description of requisite data.Publication Does Reducing Unemployment Insurance Generosity Reduce Job Match Quality?(2008)This paper analyzes how a change in Slovenia's unemployment insurance law affected the quality of jobs workers found after periods of unemployment. Taking advantage the "natural experiment" we show through difference-in-differences estimation results that reducing the potential duration of unemployment benefits had no detectable effect on wages, on the probability of securing a permanent rather than a temporary job, or on the duration of the post-unemployment job.Publication Choosing a System of Unemployment Income Support : Guidelines for Developing and Transition Countries(Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2006-02-14)Mounting evidence suggests that excessive job protection reduces employment and labor market flows, hinders technological innovations, pushes workers into the informal sector, and hurts vulnerable groups by depriving them of job opportunities. Flexible labor markets stimulate job creation, investment, and growth, but they create job insecurity and displace some workers. How can the costs of such insecurity and displacements be minimized while ensuring that the labor market remains flexible? Each of the main unemployment income support systems (unemployment insurance, unemployment assistance, unemployment insurance savings accounts, severance pay, and public works) has strengths and weaknesses. Country-specific conditions, chief among them labor market and other institutions, the capacity to administer each type of system, and the size of the informal sector, determine which system is best suited to developing and transition countries.Publication Unemployment Insurance: Efficiency Effects and Lessons for Developing Countries(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2004-04)Unemployment insurance (UI) is the most common public income support program for the unemployed in developed countries.1 In these countries, it typically offers good protection: it covers the majority of employed persons, irrespective of occupation or industry, and provides adequate smoothening of consumption patterns. For example, studies on the U.S. find that the welfare of benefit recipient households is on average only 3-8 percent lower than the welfare of otherwise identical households, and that in the absence of unemployment insurance, average consumption expenditures would fall by about 20 percent. In the last decade, UI programs have been introduced in transition countries, and their use in developing countries is on the rise as well.Publication Designing and Implementing Unemployment Benefit Systems in Middle and Low Income Countries : Key Choices between Insurance and Savings Accounts(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-05)Several middle income countries are considering reforms of severance pay regulations to both increase flexibility for firms and better protect workers. Policy discussions then often revolve around whether to adopt an unemployment insurance (UI) scheme or unemployment individual savings accounts (UISAs). Proponents of the first emphasize its ability to pool risks and introduce an element of solidarity. Critics point to its potentially negative effects on labor supply as individuals can have fewer incentives to seek, take or keep jobs. In this paper, the authors show that UI and UISAs are, in fact, particular cases of a more general design and that the crucial policy choice is in terms of how redistribution - to cover benefits for those who cannot save enough is financed. The authors outline key features of this general design and discuss trade-offs and possible solutions. The authors discusses issues related to implementation and show how recent technological developments around biometric identification can facilitate the monitoring of conditionalities related to participation in job-search and training activities.
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