Do Extended Unemployment Benefits Lengthen Unemployment Spells? Evidence from Recent

We thank participants at numerous workshops and conferences since 2011 for their comments on earlier versions of this paper. We especially thank Jesse Rothstein for detailed discussions regarding data construction and Scott Gibbons of the U.S. Department of Labor and Julie Whittaker of the Congressional Research Service for their assistance with obtaining and interpreting data on extended UI benefits. We also thank Katherine Kuang and Leila Bengali for outstanding research assistance. The views expressed in this paper are solely those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, the Federal Reserve System, or the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications