Welfare Effects of Publicly Provided Self-Insurance Against Unemployment

This paper examines the welfare aspects of loan-based self-insurance against unemployment, and discusses the scope of government intervention in its provision. This paper deals with these issues in a model where the individuals may experience unemployment shocks frequently to leave little savings for retirement, so that the government may have to provide them with unemployment and retirement insurance benefits during their unemployment and retirement, respectively. We identify the two interesting features in the model: the externality that the self-insurance exerts upon other social insurances, and the incentive of private sector to provide loans that exerts the externality upon other social insurances. In particular, this paper shows that, although the inefficiency associated with private loan warrants the government provision of loans to unemployed workers, the over-incentive of the private sector to offer loans may reduce the scope of the government intervention. This paper also shows that, unless the inefficiency associated with private loans is high, the private incentive for loans would reduce welfare because of the externality generated by private loans.