Working to get fired? Unemployment benefits and employment duration

In many countries, jobseekers are entitled to unemployment benefits (UBs) only if they have previously worked a minimum period of time. This institutional feature creates a sharp change in the disutility from unemployment at UB eligibility and may distort the duration of jobs. In this paper, we evaluate this eligibility effect using a regression discontinuity approach. Our evidence is based on longitudinal social security data from Portugal, where jobseekers are required to work a relatively long period to collect UBs. We find that monthly transitions from employment to unemployment increase by 10% as soon as the eligibility condition is met. This result is driven entirely by transitions to subsidised unemployment, which increase by 20%, as non-subsidised unemployment is not affected. The effects are even larger for the unemployed with high UB replacement ratios or those who meet the eligibility condition from multiple short employment spells. These transitions deserve greater attention from UB agencies and public employment services.     

国外巨灾保险体制对中国的启示

中国长期受到自然灾害的困扰,建立适合国情的巨灾保险体制已经成为必然。分析中国巨灾保险在供给和需求两方面均呈现不足状态的原因,借鉴国际上巨灾保险体制发展较好国家的经验,认为建立完善的巨灾保险体制需要从建立完备的法律体系、发展繁荣的巨灾保险市场和培养多层次的巨灾风险管理体系几个方面入手。从目前情况来看,应该从建立完善的法律体系、发展再保险市场、建立巨灾风险基金和发展政府巨灾债券几个方面着手,建设多层次的、适合中国国情的巨灾保险体制。     

The Impact of In-Home Services Utilization on the Institutionalization of Older People in Korea

As a result of aging populations, institutionalization of older people is creating an increasing financial burden in many countries. The purpose of the present study was to explore the impact of in-home service utilization on institutionalization. The subjects were newly certified as eligible for long-term care insurance between January and February 2009 in Korea. The follow-up period was 40 months, to April 2012. We used logistic regression models to identify factors influencing the transition to institutional service, adjusting for gender, age, living status, income level, activities of daily living, and chronic disease. The institutionalization rate was estimated to be 17.3% over 40 months. The interval from transitional living to institutionalization was 36 ± 8 months. Risk factors of transition to institutional services are being female, having advanced age, living with friends or cousins, getting dementia, and not using in-home services. We determined that institutionalization is mitigated by use of in-home services. Therefore, supplying appropriate in-home services to current nonusers would help to greatly reduce the rate of institutionalization of older people.     

新常态下推进"撤村建居"的探索与思考

"撤村建居"是一个庞大的系统工程,与国家、集体和个人利益息息相关,稍有不慎就会造成社会的不稳定因素.要以有利于经济社会全面发展、有利于加强社会事务管理、有利于提高人民生活水平为要求,统一规划,合理布局,加快农村社区建设,推进新型城镇化步伐.在实施过程中应注意妥善解决好以下问题:"撤村建居"过程中原村集体资产的处置,"撤村建居"后的换届,"撤村建居"后的公益事业及工作经费,"撤村建居"后的社区划分和管理,失地农民的社会保障,建设资金的来源等.     

Youth Perspectives on Social Insurance in Egypt: Qualitative Insights on the Gap between Legal and Effective Coverage

A gap between legal and effective coverage rates is a common challenge facing social insurance systems in Low‐ and Middle‐Income Countries. This article draws on an exploratory qualitative study with youth in Egypt to examine how labour market dynamics and worker preferences contribute to this gap. Labour market factors, particularly instability of employment and job mobility, were found to reduce the perceived value of social insurance. Poor understanding of how social insurance works was another contributing factor. However, youth displayed a high level of trust in the public social insurance system and saw pensions as valuable in the abstract. In combination with awareness promotion, eliminating penalties to discontinuous labour force participation could make social insurance more attractive to youth.     

Variable Selection via Regression Trees in the Presence of Irrelevant Variables

Many tree algorithms have been developed for regression problems. Although they are regarded as good algorithms, most of them suffer from loss of prediction accuracy when there are many irrelevant variables and the number of predictors exceeds the number of observations. We propose the multistep regression tree with adaptive variable selection to handle this problem. The variable selection step and the fitting step comprise the multistep method.

The multistep generalized unbiased interaction detection and estimation (GUIDE) with adaptive forward selection (fg) algorithm, as a variable selection tool, performs better than some of the well-known variable selection algorithms such as efficacy adaptive regression tube hunting (EARTH), FSR (false selection rate), LSCV (least squares cross-validation), and LASSO (least absolute shrinkage and selection operator) for the regression problem. The results based on simulation study show that fg outperforms other algorithms in terms of selection result and computation time. It generally selects the important variables correctly with relatively few irrelevant variables, which gives good prediction accuracy with less computation time.     

Geographic labour mobility and unemployment insurance in Europe

Conventional wisdom suggests that the generous provision of UI in Europe can account for the low regional mobility rates. Emphasizing the disincentive effect, this hypothesis ignores that UI might also have a positive effect by relaxing liquidity constraints in the presence of mobility and search costs. This paper investigates empirically the effect of UI on geographic labour mobility for five European countries. Overall, the findings suggest that receiving benefits is not associated with lower mobility, and they indicate that the effects might vary depending on the institutional characteristics and the incentive structure of the UI system of each country.      

金融危机背景下大龄返乡农民工养老保障模式与政策支撑

金融危机对我国中小型企业产生了巨大影响，企业的经营困难造成了一大批失业返乡的农民工，而其中的大龄农民工面临着更为严峻的困境。如何解决他们养老保障问题成为当今社会关注的热点。对现实生活中大龄返乡农民工养老面临的四大困境分析表明，从国家养老保障政策的支持、社会养老关系网络的构建、充分发挥受保主体的自保能力三个层面来构建金融危机后大龄返乡农民工养老保障的模式．具有一定的现实意义和价值。     

Shadow Insurance

Life insurers use reinsurance to move liabilities from regulated and rated companies that sell policies to shadow reinsurers, which are less regulated and unrated off‐balance‐sheet entities within the same insurance group. U.S. life insurance and annuity liabilities ceded to shadow reinsurers grew from $11 billion in 2002 to $364 billion in 2012. Life insurers using shadow insurance, which capture half of the market share, ceded 25 cents of every dollar insured to shadow reinsurers in 2012, up from 2 cents in 2002. By relaxing capital requirements, shadow insurance could reduce the marginal cost of issuing policies and thereby improve retail market efficiency. However, shadow insurance could also reduce risk‐based capital and increase expected loss for the industry. We model and quantify these effects based on publicly available data and plausible assumptions.     

农村居民大病保险经济补偿能力及效果

经济补偿是农村居民大病保险的基本职责,经济补偿能力是履行该职责的前提和基础,经济补偿效果是履行该职责的具体体现。利用江苏省5个样本地区的实地调研数据,从横向和纵向两个维度评估了各地大病保险的经济补偿能力,从大病保险的受益面、患者个人自付比例、大病保险基金使用率等指标综合衡量各地大病保险的经济补偿效果。研究发现,医疗费用、筹资机制、政策设计等多种主客观因素共同约束着大病保险经济补偿能力和补偿效果的发挥,亟需从补偿主体的衔接、大病费用的控制、筹资机制的建设、大病保险的服务等方面进行改进。