Ido Shlomo

Authored the chapter: "Cultivate good working relationships with data consumers."

Unemployment Accounts are private mandatory savings accounts which can only be used during unemployment or retirement. As opposed to unemployment insurance, unemployment accounts are able to mitigate the problem of moral hazard but at the cost of denying the unemployed any public insurance. We study a mixed approach, called Unemployment Insurance Accounts (UIA), which takes elements from both Unemployment Accounts and unemployment insurance. Under UIA, workers save in a mandatory savings account when employed and withdraw from that account when unemployed. Unemployed workers with depleted accounts receive unemployment benefits. This approach is more efficient than unemployment insurance since it can provide benefits selectively. We calibrate the model to the Israeli economy by making use of both existing and newly developed parameter estimates. We find that the transition to UIA yields a welfare gain of about 1%, measured as consumption equivalent variation.