The RFBerlin Brown Bag Seminar is an informal lunchtime meet up where researchers, students, and practitioners present ongoing work and new ideas in a relaxed, discussion-oriented setting. Rooted in the tradition of bringing one’s own lunch in a paper-brown bag, it offers space for open exchange and constructive feedback.

This week, we welcome Sara Spaziani, Assistant Professor at the University of Warwick. She holds a PhD in Economics from Brown University.

Her research is in public economics, with a focus on the optimal design of social insurance programs and policies addressing gender inequality.

Event Topic:

Optimal Unemployment Insurance Financing: Theory and Evidence from Two U.S. States

I study the optimal financing of unemployment benefits, comparing experience rating, where firms’ tax rates are proportional to benefit spending from their layoffs, to uniform taxation. I derive a sufficient-statistics formula characterizing the optimal degree of experience rating through the tradeoff between firms’ insurance value against tax increases during shocks and two distortions: labor misallocation toward high–unemploymentrisk industries and moral hazard from increased layoffs. I estimate the formula for Colorado and South Carolina using unemployment tax filing data and experience-rating reforms. I have three main findings. Firms reduce employment and wages in response to higher taxes. Labor misallocation is the primary cost of uniform taxation. Experience rating is mostly inefficiently low.

Event Details:

Participation in the seminar is limited to RFBerlin members and researchers from affiliated institutions. External researchers who are interested in attending are kindly asked to contact us at [email protected]