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Working Paper
Carrots or Sticks? Short-Time Work vs. Layoff Taxes
While unemployment insurance systems are widely used to insure workers against income losses after separations, it is well known that they can inefficiently increase separations in the labor market. There are two distinct policy instruments commonly used by governments that can counter this known problem: layoff taxes and short-time work schemes. This study provides a search-and-matching model to evaluate which of the two is the better policy tool. We show that if only a few firms are financially constrained, layoff taxes are better because they do not distort working hours in the economy. ...