Unemployment insurance, risk, and the acquisition of specific skills: an experimental approach

Educational and skill divisions among workers are an increasingly important political cleavage in advanced democracies. We provide the first experimental analysis of the effects of unemployment risk and unemployment insurance generosity on workers’ investment in job-specific skills. Using both labor...

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التفاصيل البيبلوغرافية
المؤلفون الرئيسيون: Ahlquist, JS, Ansell, B
التنسيق: Journal article
اللغة:English
منشور في: Now Publishers 2023
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author Ahlquist, JS
Ansell, B
author_facet Ahlquist, JS
Ansell, B
author_sort Ahlquist, JS
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description Educational and skill divisions among workers are an increasingly important political cleavage in advanced democracies. We provide the first experimental analysis of the effects of unemployment risk and unemployment insurance generosity on workers’ investment in job-specific skills. Using both laboratory and online samples, we find that, even in highly permissive contractual environments, more generous unemployment insurance leads to a greater level of investment in task-specific skills that risk obsolescence. Our experiment provides evidence supporting a key part of the “Varieties of Capitalism” approach to political economy while also finding several behavioral deviations from standard human capital theory.
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spelling oxford-uuid:dc9549d0-12cb-427c-9279-4b09d60d98152023-12-15T10:25:02ZUnemployment insurance, risk, and the acquisition of specific skills: an experimental approachJournal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:dc9549d0-12cb-427c-9279-4b09d60d9815EnglishSymplectic ElementsNow Publishers2023Ahlquist, JSAnsell, BEducational and skill divisions among workers are an increasingly important political cleavage in advanced democracies. We provide the first experimental analysis of the effects of unemployment risk and unemployment insurance generosity on workers’ investment in job-specific skills. Using both laboratory and online samples, we find that, even in highly permissive contractual environments, more generous unemployment insurance leads to a greater level of investment in task-specific skills that risk obsolescence. Our experiment provides evidence supporting a key part of the “Varieties of Capitalism” approach to political economy while also finding several behavioral deviations from standard human capital theory.
spellingShingle Ahlquist, JS
Ansell, B
Unemployment insurance, risk, and the acquisition of specific skills: an experimental approach
title Unemployment insurance, risk, and the acquisition of specific skills: an experimental approach
title_full Unemployment insurance, risk, and the acquisition of specific skills: an experimental approach
title_fullStr Unemployment insurance, risk, and the acquisition of specific skills: an experimental approach
title_full_unstemmed Unemployment insurance, risk, and the acquisition of specific skills: an experimental approach
title_short Unemployment insurance, risk, and the acquisition of specific skills: an experimental approach
title_sort unemployment insurance risk and the acquisition of specific skills an experimental approach
work_keys_str_mv AT ahlquistjs unemploymentinsuranceriskandtheacquisitionofspecificskillsanexperimentalapproach
AT ansellb unemploymentinsuranceriskandtheacquisitionofspecificskillsanexperimentalapproach