Data and Code for: Job Displacement Insurance and (the Lack of) Consumption-Smoothing

Principal Investigator(s):  View help for Principal Investigator(s) François Gerard, Queen Mary University; Joana Naritomi, London School of Economics

Version:  View help for Version V1

Name File Type Size Last Modified
  App Figures 11/17/2020 05:54:AM
  App Tables 11/17/2020 05:55:AM
  Empirical Work 12/01/2020 02:08:PM
  Figures 11/17/2020 05:56:AM
  Structural Model 11/17/2020 06:01:AM
  Tables 11/17/2020 05:55:AM
Catalog_TablesFiguresNumbers.xlsx application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet 22.6 KB 11/17/2020 12:59:AM
READ_ME.pdf application/pdf 179.3 KB 11/13/2020 04:04:AM

Project Citation: 

Gerard, François, and Naritomi, Joana. Data and Code for: Job Displacement Insurance and (the Lack of) Consumption-Smoothing. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2021. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2021-02-19. https://doi.org/10.3886/E121241V1

Project Description

Summary:  View help for Summary We study the spending profile of workers who experience both a positive transitory income shock (lump-sum severance pay) and a negative permanent income shock (layoff). Using de-identified expenditure and employment data from Brazil, we show that workers increase spending at layoff by 35% despite experiencing a 14% long-term loss. We find high sensitivity of spending to cash-on-hand across consumption categories and for several sources of variation, including predictable income drops. A model with present-biased workers can rationalize our findings, and highlights the importance of the timing of benefit disbursement for the consumption-smoothing gains of job displacement insurance policies.
Funding Sources:  View help for Funding Sources International Growth Centre, the National Science Foundation (NSF grant SES-1757105), and STICERD

Scope of Project

JEL Classification:  View help for JEL Classification
      E21 Macroeconomics: Consumption; Saving; Wealth
      E26 Informal Economy; Underground Economy
      J65 Unemployment Insurance; Severance Pay; Plant Closings
Geographic Coverage:  View help for Geographic Coverage Brazil
Time Period(s):  View help for Time Period(s) 2010 – 2014 (Main Data Window)
Data Type(s):  View help for Data Type(s) program source code; survey data

Methodology

Data Source:  View help for Data Source
  • Employment history and unemployment insurance data are from the Brazilian Ministry of Labor and Employment (MTE)
  • Expenditure data was created based on de-identified receipt data from an Anonymous firm
  • Household survey data is from the Brazilian Census Bureau (IBGE)

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Published Versions

V1 [2021-02-19]

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