| 1. |
- Kolsrud, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
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Retirement Consumption and Pension Designs
- 2024
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Ingår i: The American Economic Review. - : American Economic Association. - 0002-8282 .- 1944-7981. ; 114:1, s. 89-133
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper analyzes consumption to evaluate the distributional effects of pension reforms. Using Swedish administrative data, we show that on average, workers who retire earlier consume less while retired and experience larger drops in consumption around retirement. Interpreted via a theoretical model, these findings imply that reforms incentivizing later retirement incur a substantial consumption smoothing cost. Turning to other features of pension policy, we find that reforms that redistribute based on early-career labor supply would have opposite-signed redistributive effects, while differentiating on wealth may help to target pension benefits toward those who are vulnerable to larger drops in consumption around retirement.
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| 2. |
- Kolsrud, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
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The optimal timing of unemployment benefits : theory and evidence from Sweden
- 2015
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This paper provides a simple, yet general framework to analyze the optimal time profile of benefits during the unemployment spell. We derive simple sufficient-statistics formulae capturing the insurance value and incentive costs of unemployment benefits paid at different times during the unemployment spell. Our general approach allows to revisit and evaluate in a transparent way the separate arguments for inclining or declining profiles put forward in the theoretical literature. We then estimate our sufficient statistics using administrative data on unemployment, income and wealth in Sweden. First, we exploit duration-dependent kinks in the replacement rate and find that the moral hazard cost of benefits is larger when paid earlier in the spell. Second, we find that the drop in consumption determining the insurance value of benefits is large from the start of the spell, but further increases throughout the spell.On average, savings and credit play a limited role in smoothing consumption. Our evidence therefore indicates that the recent change from a flat to a declining benefit profile in Sweden has decreased welfare. In fact, the local welfare gains push towards an increasing rather than decreasing benefit profile over the spell.
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| 3. |
- Kolsrud, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
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The Optimal Timing of Unemployment Benefits : Theory and Evidence from Sweden
- 2018
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Ingår i: The American Economic Review. - : American Economic Association. - 0002-8282 .- 1944-7981. ; 108:4-5, s. 985-1033
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper provides a simple, yet robust framework to evaluate the time profile of benefits paid during an unemployment spell. We derive sufficient-statistics formulae capturing the marginal insurance value and incentive costs of unemployment-benefits paid at different times during a spell. Our approach allows us to revisit separate arguments for inclining or declining profiles put forward in the theoretical literature and to identify welfare-improving-changes in the benefit profile that account for all relevant arguments jointly: For the empirical implementation, we use administrative data on unemployment, linked to data on consumption, income, and wealth in Sweden. First, we exploit duration-dependent kinks in the replacement rate and find that, if anything, the moral hazard cost of benefits is larger when paid earlier the spell. Second, we find that the drop in consumption affecting the insurance value of benefits is large from the start of the spell, hut further increases throughout tie spell. In trading off insurance and incentives, our analysis suggests that the flat benefit profile in Sweden has been too generous overall. However, both from the insurance and the incentives side, we find no evidence to support the introduction of a declining tilt in the profile.
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| 4. |
- Kolsrud, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
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The value of registry data for consumption analysis : An application to health shocks
- 2020
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Ingår i: Journal of Public Economics. - : Elsevier BV. - 0047-2727 .- 1879-2316. ; 189
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper measures consumption expenditures using registry data on income and asset holdings in Sweden. We show how a registry-based measure complements traditional survey measures of consumption and can alleviate some critical limitations. We describe the construction of our measure, which builds on prior work and exploits the identity coming from the household budget constraint between consumption expenditures and income net of savings. We demonstrate the value of the registry-based measure to study consumption responses to shocks, also relative to surveyed consumption. In our application to health shocks, we find that Swedish household experience permanent earning drops, but generous social transfers provide substantial consumption smoothing. We document important heterogeneity in consumption responses and the limited role for private means.
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| 5. |
- Landais, Camille, et al.
(författare)
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Risk-Based Selection in Unemployment Insurance : Evidence and Implications
- 2021
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Ingår i: The American Economic Review. - : American Economic Association. - 0002-8282 .- 1944-7981. ; 111:4, s. 1315-1355
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper studies whether adverse selection can rationalize a universal mandate for unemployment insurance (UI). Building on a unique feature of the unemployment policy in Sweden, where workers can opt for supplemental UI coverage above a minimum mandate, we provide the first direct evidence for adverse selection in UI and derive its implications for UI design. We find that the unemployment risk is more than twice as high for workers who buy supplemental coverage. Exploiting variation in risk and prices, we show how 25-30 percent of this correlation is driven by risk-based selection, with the remainder driven by moral hazard. Due to the moral hazard and despite the adverse selection we find that mandating the supplemental coverage to individuals with low willingness-to-pay would be suboptimal. We show under which conditions a design leaving choice to workers would dominate a UI system with a single mandate. In this design, using a subsidy for supplemental coverage is optimal and complementary to the use of a minimum mandate.
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