The Unemployment Insurance (UI) system is a lasting piece of the Social Security Act which was enacted in 1935. But like most things that are over 80 years old, it occasionally needs maintenance to keep it operating smoothly while keeping up with the changing demands placed upon it. However, the UI system has been ignored by policymakers for decades and, say the authors, it is broken, out of date, and badly in need of repair. Stephen A. Wandner pulls together a group of UI researchers, each with decades of experience, who describe the weaknesses in the current system and propose policy reforms that they say would modernize the system and prepare us for the next recession.

Federal government statistics provide critical information to the country and serve a key role in a democracy. For decades, sample surveys with instruments carefully designed for particular data needs have been one of the primary methods for collecting data for federal statistics. However, the costs of conducting such surveys have been increasing while response rates have been declining, and many surveys are not able to fulfill growing demands for more timely information and for more detailed information at state and local levels. Innovations in Federal Statistics examines the opportunities and risks of using government administrative and private sector data sources to foster a paradigm shift in federal statistical programs that would combine diverse data sources in a secure manner to enhance federal statistics. This first publication of a two-part series discusses the challenges faced by the federal statistical system and the foundational elements needed for a new paradigm.

This book examines unemployment insurance policy through a survey, taking stock of the theoretical work in the field of labor economics. It closely follows and assesses developments in the modelling of optimal unemployment insurance (UI) policies, beginning with the initial analytical findings produced in the second half of the 1970s. A main part of the survey is devoted to the two basic strands of analysis about, respectively, the optimal level of UI benefits and the optimal time profile of UI policy. The book has two different objectives. The first is to provide an essential summary of the individual models, with the intention of underscoring how a number of specific messages for the policy-maker can be derived from analytical constructions. It further emphasizes and comments on what the models deliver to UI policy-makers. The second objective is to stress the importance and extension of open questions in the field of the theoretical approach to the unemployment insurance issue. The survey discusses the multiplicity of heterogeneities of the labor world in particular as relevant for UI issues on the one side, and on the other hand, the independence of the two basic choices of UI policy, its meaning and its limits, and the possible forms of complementarity between these choices. The book is a must-read for researchers, students, and policy-makers interested in a better understanding of the field of labor economics in general, as well as unemployment insurance policies in particular.