The Displacement Effect of Reemployment Bonus Programs

Abstract

This paper explores whether reemployment bonuses--cash payments made to insured unemployed workers who find reemployment quickly--have the unintended consequence of displacing workers who are not covered by the bonus program. We develop two partial equilibrium matching models of the labor market, patterned after the work of Diamond (1982), Mortensen (1982), and Pissarides (1984). In the first model, wages are assumed exogenous, in the second endogenous. In both, we find that the direct substitution of covered for uncovered workers (which constitutes displacement) is countered by two offsetting effects : a gross job creation effect, which results from the increased search effort of covered workers ; and a relatively small rivalry effect, in which uncovered workers search harder because of the increased difficulty they face in finding jobs. Both models suggest that, on net, the displacement effect is small to nonexistent.

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