Benefit Entitlement and Unemployment Duration - The Role of Policy Endogeneity

The potential duration of benefits is generally viewed as an important determinant of unemployment duration. This paper evaluates a unique policy change that prolonged entitlement to regular unemployment benefits from 30 weeks to a maximum of 209 weeks for elderly individuals in certain regions of Austria. In the evaluation, we explicitly account for the fact that the program was an endogenous policy response to a crisis affecting individuals with severe labor market problems. The main results are: (i) REBP reduced the transition rate to jobs by 17%; (ii) accounting for endogenous policy adoption is important and quantitatively significant.quasi-experiments, policy endogeneity, benefit entitlement, maximum benefit duration, unemployment duration, unemployment insurance