Labour Market Screening and the Design of Social Insurance: An Equilibrium Analysis of the Labour Market for the Disabled
中文摘要
本文研究劳动力市场中企业的筛选激励如何影响社会保险项目的最优设计，并在考虑企业对残疾人进行筛选的情况下，对美国残疾政策进行定量评估。我们构建了一个均衡搜寻模型，其中生产率不同的工人对非工资福利具有异质性偏好，且企业无法提供明确取决于工人类型的雇佣合同。在这一环境中，企业可能利用合同筛除某一类型的工人，从而扭曲均衡中的就业率和合同。因此，社会保险政策的最优结构取决于企业的筛选激励。我们扩展并结构估计了这一框架，以定量理解企业筛除残疾工人的激励所造成的无效率，并考察残疾保险（DI）与多种形式企业补贴的最优联合设计。我们发现，雇佣补贴可以缓解筛选扭曲；与此同时，雇佣补贴还通过减少残疾保险所产生的劳动供给负向激励而与残疾保险相互作用。最优政策结构通过同时提高企业补贴和残疾保险给付的慷慨程度，带来了可观的福利增益。
Abstract
Abstract This article studies how firms’ screening incentives in the labour market affect the optimal design of social insurance programs and quantitatively assesses the U.S. disability policies accounting for firms’ screening of the disabled. We develop an equilibrium search model where workers with different productivities have heterogeneous preferences over non-wage benefits and firms cannot offer an employment contract that explicitly depends on worker types. In this environment, firms may use contracts to screen out a certain type of workers, distorting employment rates and contracts in equilibrium. Therefore, the optimal structure of social insurance policies depends on firms’ screening incentives. We extend and structurally estimate this framework to quantitatively understand the inefficiencies arising from firms’ incentives to screen out disabled workers and examine the optimal joint design of disability insurance (DI) and various forms of firm subsidies. We find that hiring subsidies mitigate screening distortions; at the same time, they interact with DI by reducing the labour supply disincentives it generates. The optimal policy structure leads to a considerable welfare gain by simultaneously making firm subsidies and DI benefits more generous.